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Boiled Turkey, Anglaise
Singe, cut the head and feet off a tender turkey of seven or eight pounds. Draw, wipe and truss, place in a large saucepan, add three scraped medium carrots and three medium, white turnips. Tie in a bunch two branches celery, one leek, two branches parsley, a sprig thyme, one bay leaf, one clove, and add to the turkey. Pour in sufficient water to completely cover, season with a tablespoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, cover the pan and let gently boil for one hour. Trim off the stalk and outer leaves from a head of cauliflower, then divide it in small bouquets, add to the turkey and let boil again for forty minutes. Lift up the turkey, untruss and dress on a dish. Cut the carrots and turnips in one-inch pieces and with the cauliflower bouquets dress around the turkey. Have six boiled, peeled new potatoes, also arrange them around the dish and serve.
N. B. Strain the remaining turkey broth in the white broth vessel.
A poached turkey in the English manner, written for a hotel kitchen where a stockpot was always on the fire. Two adjustments carry most of the weight: keep the water below a true boil, and add the cauliflower far later than the text says.
- Gentle boil means a bare simmerHeld at a rolling boil the breast turns to string long before the thigh is done. Bring to the boil, skim, then hold at 180-190F with the surface barely moving.
- Check the temperature, not the clockOne hour forty minutes total is about right for a 7-8 lb bird fully submerged, but poaching times swing with pot size and water volume. The thickest part of the thigh should read 165F and the juices should run clear.
- The cauliflowerForty minutes in simmering broth reduces florets to pulp. Add them in the last 15 minutes, or cook them separately in a ladleful of the broth so they hold their shape for the garnish.
- Bird preparationSingeing, drawing and cutting off head and feet all belong to a butcher's counter that no longer exists. Buy an oven-ready bird; trussing with kitchen string is still worth doing, since it keeps the legs from splaying in the water.
- SeasoningA tablespoon of salt in enough water to cover a whole turkey is very light seasoning, and the original assumes the broth is destined for the stockpot rather than the table. Taste and salt the poaching liquid properly if you want a seasoned bird.
- "The white broth vessel"A professional instruction: strain the liquid into the pot kept for fond blanc, unbrowned poultry and veal stock. At home, strain, chill, lift the fat and you have several quarts of excellent light stock.
- AromaticsThe tied bundle is a standard bouquet garni with a leek and celery added. Two branches of celery means two ribs; the single clove is a whole clove, not a clove of garlic.
- Sauce and yieldServes six to eight. Boiled fowl in the English style was often sent out with a sauce made from the broth, parsley or egg sauce among them; without one the plate is very plain.
Boiling, or more properly poaching, was a standard English treatment for large birds well into the twentieth century, and "anglaise" here signals that plainness rather than any particular region: the bird cooked in water with root vegetables, the vegetables lifted out and arranged around it, the liquid saved. The method suited a period when ovens were unreliable and a stockpot was continuous, and it had the practical virtue of producing two things at once, a dinner and a day's worth of white stock. The final note about the "white broth vessel" gives away the book's origins in professional kitchen practice, where fond blanc was kept strictly separate from browned stock. Turkey itself had been a European festive bird since the sixteenth century, brought from Mexico by Spanish traders, and the seven- or eight-pound bird specified here is far smaller than the roasting turkeys sold today.