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Spring Turkey, Gould
Carefully singe and cut head and feet off a nice, tender spring turkey, split open through back without separating, carefully draw, neatly wipe and remove spinal bone. Envelop in a towel and lightly flatten with a cleaver, lightly prickle both sides with point of a needle and place on a flat dish. Carefully crack eight sound walnuts, remove fibres, place meat in mortar with a small, sound, peeled and very finely chopped shallot and pound to a fine pulp. Add a half ounce fresh butter, light teaspoon French mustard, saltspoon each curry powder and paprika, three-quarters teaspoon salt, strained juice quarter of a sound lemon and briskly pound again for a minute. Take up pulp from mortar, carefully rub the turkey all over with it and let infuse for forty-five minutes, being careful to rub frequently meanwhile, arrange bird on double broiler and broil on a brisk fire for eight minutes on each side. Peel and core three good-sized, sound, juicy apples, cut each in four equal slices, lay on a lightly buttered baking dish one beside another, lay turkey on apples and arrange six thin slices raw lean bacon over turkey. Spread remaining mixed butter in dish over, set in oven for twelve minutes, frequently basing with its own gravy once in a while, remove and send to table in same dish.
A spatchcocked young turkey under a walnut-and-mustard paste, finished over apple slices with bacon. The method is sound; the timings assume a much smaller bird than the word "turkey" now suggests.
- What a spring turkey wasA young bird, far smaller than a modern roasting turkey, sold young rather than held for the autumn trade in heavy toms; period sources are vague about exact weights. Nothing in a modern supermarket matches it; two poussins, a pair of Cornish hens, or a 3 to 4 lb chicken split through the back behave the same way under this treatment.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockEight minutes a side under the broiler plus twelve in the oven will not carry a whole bird of any size to a safe 165F in the thigh. Use an instant-read thermometer at the thickest part of the thigh and in the breast, and extend the oven stage as long as it takes.
- Old measuresA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. A "light" teaspoon is a scant one. "French mustard" here means smooth Dijon, not the yellow ballpark kind.
- The double broilerA hinged wire grill that clamped the bird flat between two grids so it could be turned as one piece over live coals. A grill basket does the same job; failing that, weight the flattened bird under a foil-wrapped brick on a grill or under a very hot broiler.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as the book assumes a range fire. The bird is already seared, so a hot oven of about 425F suits the twelve-minute finish and keeps the bacon rendering.
- The walnut pasteEight walnuts pounded with shallot, butter, mustard, curry and lemon is a stiff compound butter. A small food processor gets it there in seconds, but stop short of an oily smear — you want a paste that clings when rubbed on. The needle pricking presumably helps the mixture penetrate; scoring the skin lightly does much the same.
- The apple layerThe apple slices are a trivet as much as a garnish, insulating the underside and catching fat from the bacon. Use a firm variety that holds its shape — Braeburn, Granny Smith — or they collapse into sauce.
- Bacon"Thin slices raw lean bacon" means uncooked, and a leaner cut rather than a fatty one. Heavily smoked supermarket bacon will bury the curry and walnut.
- YieldA bird of this size should serve roughly four; two poussins serve two to three. Serve straight from the baking dish as directed, with the apples and pan juices.
The International Cook Book belongs to Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shares the habit of that trade of hanging a personal name on a dish — Gould, Vanderbilt, Astor — as a compliment to a patron or simply as a way of distinguishing one preparation of turkey from the dozens of others in the same volume. The attributions are rarely documented and should be read as restaurant nomenclature rather than provenance. What is more telling is the bird itself: "spring turkey" marks a period when poultry was seasonal and a turkey could be a small, tender thing broiled like a chicken, quite unlike the ten-pound roasting birds that later monopolised the name. The seasoning — curry powder, paprika and French mustard worked into pounded walnuts — shows the confident borrowing of a Gilded Age hotel kitchen, where an Anglo-Indian spice tin sat beside the mortar without comment.