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English Roast Turkey
Kill several days before cooking, prepare in the usual manner, stuff with bread-crumbs (not using the crusts) rubbed fine, moistened with butter and two eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, sage, thyme or sweet marjoram; sew up, skewer, and place to roast in a rack within a dripping-pan; spread with bits of butter, turn and baste frequently with butter, pepper, salt and water; a few minutes before, it is done glaze with the white of an egg; dish the turkey, pour off most of the fat, add the chopped giblets and the water in which they were boiled, thicken with flour and butter rubbed together, stir in the dripping-pan, let boil thoroughly and serve in a gravy-boat. Garnish with fried oysters, and serve with celery-sauce and stewed gooseberries. Choose a turkey weighing from eight to ten pounds. If it becomes too brown, cover with buttered paper.--Mrs. C. T. Carson.
The recipe assumes a cook who knows roasting by eye and gives neither temperature nor time. Both are supplied below, along with the parts of the method that no longer apply to a bird bought at a shop.
- "Kill several days before cooking"This means hanging the bird to age and tenderise, a step already handled for you. A modern turkey needs only to be kept refrigerated at or below 40F and cooked within a day or two of purchase; nothing should be left standing at room temperature.
- Oven temperatureRoast at 325F throughout. An 8-10 lb unstuffed bird takes roughly 2 1/2 to 3 hours; stuffed as written, closer to 3 to 3 1/2. Go by the thermometer, not the clock.
- The hinge: doneness165F in the thickest part of the thigh, clear of bone, and 165F at the centre of the stuffing. Because the cavity stuffing here is bound with egg and butter, it heats slowly; if the breast is done before the stuffing is, bake the remainder in a buttered dish alongside.
- Basting liquidButter, pepper, salt and water beaten together is a period basting mixture rather than an ingredient list to measure. A cup of water with a few tablespoons of melted butter is the sense of it. Frequent basting cools the skin and lengthens the roast; every 30 to 40 minutes is enough.
- The egg-white glazeBrushed on in the last few minutes it sets to a thin, shiny lacquer. It goes on over hot skin at full oven heat and will scorch if applied too early.
- Buttered paperParchment, buttered, or a loose tent of foil. Put it over the breast once the colour is right rather than waiting for it to darken further.
- Giblet gravySimmer neck, heart and gizzard (not the liver, which turns the sauce bitter and grainy) in salted water for an hour while the bird roasts. The flour-and-butter paste rubbed together is beurre manié; whisk it in off the boil in small pieces or it will lump.
- The garnishesCelery sauce is stewed celery in a white sauce thickened with butter and flour; stewed gooseberries stand in for cranberry as the sharp element, and tart green ones cooked with a little sugar are the intent. Fried oysters were a common nineteenth-century American flourish and can simply be omitted.
- YieldAn 8-10 lb bird serves 6 to 8.
The instruction to kill several days ahead is the oldest thing on this page: hanging poultry in a cool larder to let it tenderise was common before mechanical refrigeration, and cookbooks of the 1880s printed it without comment. What makes the dish "English" is the seasoning and the accompaniments rather than the roasting method — sage, thyme and marjoram in a crumb stuffing, and gooseberries as the sour fruit served with rich meat, a pairing long established in British cookery. The fried oysters are the American addition, and oysters in particular turn up constantly in nineteenth-century Southern holiday tables, shipped inland by rail in barrels through the cold months. The Dixie Cook Book collected contributed recipes under the names of the women who sent them in, which is why this one carries Mrs. C. T. Carson's signature and her assumptions about what a cook already knew.