Home › The World's Kitchen › Boiled Turkey, Demi-Deuil
Boiled Turkey, Demi-Deuil
Singe, and cut the head and feet from a tender turkey of about seven pounds. Draw, wipe and truss, then place in a large saucepan with two medium carrots, two turnips, two white onions, one leek, one branch celery, two branches parsley, one bay leaf, two cloves and a sprig of thyme. Moisten with one and a half gallons water, season with a heavy tablespoon salt and teaspoon white pepper, set the pan on the fire, cover it and let boil slowly for two hours. Remove the turkey, cut the legs off, then cut each leg in three pieces and place on a large dish. Remove the skin from the breast, cut the breast into very thin slices and neatly dress them over the legs. Pour a demi-deuil sauce over all and serve. Save the broth for tomorrow.
N.B. A boiled rice can be served around the turkey if desired.
A whole bird poached in an aromatic vegetable broth, carved and sauced. The technique is sound; most of what needs translating is the shopping and the word "boil."
- Never actually boil itThe instruction says "boil slowly," which in older kitchen language generally means a bare simmer with the surface barely trembling, roughly 180-190F. A true rolling boil shreds the breast and clouds the broth you are told to save.
- Buying the birdSingeing, drawing and removing head and feet are all done for you now. Ask for a 7 lb bird, which in practice means a young hen turkey or a large roasting chicken; many supermarket turkeys are considerably heavier and will not fit the timing or the pot.
- Doneness, not the clockTwo hours suits a 7 lb bird in about 1.5 gallons of water. Verify rather than trust it: 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone. A heavier bird needs proportionally longer and the water level checked.
- The potA gallon and a half of water plus a whole turkey wants a 12-quart stockpot or larger. The bird should be just covered; add water if it isn't, and skim the grey foam off in the first fifteen minutes or the broth will taste muddy.
- TrussingTie the legs together and the wings against the body with kitchen twine. Loose limbs cook unevenly and the bird will not hold its shape for the carving described here.
- Demi-deuil sauce"Half-mourning" refers to black truffle against white flesh. The recipe does not say how the sauce is made; the usual reading is a velouty or suprjme built on the poaching broth, finished with cream and truffle. Truffle is the point of the name, and without it the dish is a plain white sauce.
- SeasoningA heavy tablespoon of salt in six quarts of water is light by modern stock standards. Season the sauce and the sliced meat at the table rather than dumping more salt into broth you intend to keep.
- Yield and the brothServes eight generously. "Save the broth for tomorrow" means strain it, cool it quickly, and refrigerate; the fat cap lifts off cold and the liquid makes an excellent soup base. Use within three days or freeze.
Demi-deuil — half-mourning — is a French kitchen term for white poached poultry marked with black truffle, the same visual joke as the muted black-and-grey clothing worn in the later stages of mourning. It is most closely associated with Lyon, where poached hen with truffle slid under the breast skin became the signature of the city's mères and is conventionally traced to the restaurant of Mère Fillioux. This version is the simpler restaurant treatment: the truffle goes into the sauce rather than under the skin, and the bird is turkey rather than the Bresse hen a Lyonnais cook would have reached for. The instruction to save the broth is the working professional's habit rather than a flourish — a poached bird yields two dishes.