No. 2043

Spring Turkey with Turnips—Wings

Filets ou Ailes de Dindonneau aux Navets

Procure a spring turkey of about eight pounds; draw, singe and clean it well, suppressing all its pin feathers, remove the breasts with the skin and pinion bone attached; fry in butter some carrots, onions, lean salt pork, thyme and bay leaf, then moisten with stock (No. 194a). Line a flat saucepan or sautoir with bards of fat pork, strain the above stock and pour in a third part of it, add the fillets, and let the liquid reduce to a glaze, then add another third part and set the pan in the oven to cook while basting plentifully and adding more stock as fast as it reduces, finally glazing to a beautiful color. Aside from this blanch and cook some turnips in stock and sugar having just sufficient moisture that when done they have fallen to a glaze; they should first be cut into cork-shaped pieces with square angles. After they are finished cooking, put in a little meat glaze (No. 402) and fresh butter; strain the stock, remove its fat and reduce it with as much veloute sauce (No. 415), thickening just when ready with raw egg-yolks diluted in stock, and finishing by stirring in a piece of fresh butter. Lay the breasts in the center of a dish, with the turnips around and cover the whole with the sauce.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A French braise of turkey breast served with glazed turnips and a velouté liaison. Ranhofer assumes a kitchen with stock, velouté and meat glaze already at hand; the work is mostly in the sauce, and the one step that will ruin it is boiling the egg yolks.

The hinge: the yolk liaisonOnce the raw yolks diluted with stock go in, the sauce must never reach a simmer or it will curdle into grains. Pull the pan off the heat, temper the yolks with a ladle of hot sauce first, return it, and hold it below about 180F until it thickens; then whisk in the butter off heat.
"Spring turkey"Dindonneau is a young bird, here about eight pounds. A supermarket turkey breast of 3-4 lb, skin on, stands in perfectly well; ask for the wing pinion left attached if you want Ranhofer's presentation, though it is decorative rather than functional.
Bards of fat porkThin sheets of pork back fat used to line the pan and keep the meat from scorching. Sliced fatback or unsmoked pork belly from a butcher works; thin-sliced salt pork, blanched a minute to draw off some salt, is the practical substitute.
Sautoir and oven heatA sautoir is a straight-sided shallow pan; any wide braising pan will do. Ranhofer gives no temperature; 'set the pan in the oven' implies a moderate oven, low enough that the successive additions of stock reduce steadily rather than boil away while the meat is basted.
DonenessTurkey breast is done at 165F at the thickest point, which for a 3-4 lb piece under this basting regime is roughly 50-70 minutes. Beyond that it dries no matter how plentifully you baste; the glazing is a matter of the last few minutes, not extra cooking time.
The cross-referencesNo. 194a is a stock; No. 402 is meat glaze, i.e. stock reduced to a syrup; No. 415 is veloute, a white roux sauce made with veal or poultry stock. Good store-bought stock reduced hard covers the first two, and a veloute is five minutes of flour, butter and stock.
The turnipsCutting them into squared 'cork-shaped' pieces is so they cook evenly and hold their edges under the glaze. Blanch, then cook in stock with sugar until the liquid has reduced to a shiny film, finishing with meat glaze and fresh butter as Ranhofer directs; young turnips need 10-15 minutes, older ones longer and are worth peeling deeply.
YieldThe original gives none. One 3-4 lb breast with the turnips and sauce serves four to six.

A Little History

This is No. 2043 of Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the house style exactly: a French classical garnish, three separate preparations, and a chain of numbered cross-references to stocks and mother sauces made elsewhere in the kitchen. Turkey with turnips is a straightforwardly French pairing — the sweet, slightly bitter root cut to a uniform shape and glazed in its own reducing liquid is the standard aux navets treatment, applied in French cooking to duck and mutton as readily as to poultry. That Ranhofer specifies a young eight-pound bird, and uses only the breasts, is a reminder that a restaurant of this scale had other services waiting for the legs, carcass and trimmings.