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Turkey
(Tacchino) The turkey has been imported to Europe from America, but it is nevertheless a well known dish in Italian families, although not enjoying the popularity that it has on this side of the ocean. When roasted it is generally larded moderately with little pieces of garlic and bay-leaf or rosemary and seasoned with a hash of corned beef or bacon, a little butter, salt and pepper, tomato sauce or tomato paste diluted in water. The breast, flattened until it is about half an inch thick and seasoned generously some hours before cooking with oil, salt and pepper, is excellent broiled on the grill.
This is a method sketch rather than a measured recipe — Gentile gives seasonings and technique but no weights, times or temperatures. Two dishes are described: a larded roast bird and a flattened, grilled breast.
- The hinge: internal temperatureNothing here tells you when the bird is done. Roast to 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone, and rest 20-30 minutes before carving. Larding with fat and basting with thinned tomato helps, but it does not protect an overcooked breast.
- "Hash of corned beef or bacon"This most likely renders an Italian battuto: cured pork, or salt-cured beef, finely chopped with the herbs. It is unlikely to mean canned American corned beef. Something like 4 oz of pancetta or unsmoked bacon, minced to a paste with the garlic and rosemary, suits a 12 lb bird.
- Larding, in practice"Larded moderately with little pieces of garlic and bay-leaf or rosemary" means cutting slits in the breast and thighs with the point of a knife and pushing slivers of garlic and a torn bay leaf or rosemary tip into each. A dozen or so incisions is moderate; more than that and the bird tastes of nothing else.
- Oven temperatureThe passage gives none. For a modern equivalent, start at 425F for 30 minutes to colour the skin, then drop to 325F for the remainder — roughly 13-15 minutes per pound total for an unstuffed bird, checked by thermometer rather than clock.
- The tomato basting liquidTomato paste diluted in water — about 2 tablespoons paste to a cup of water — goes in the roasting pan, not over the skin, or it scorches. Add it after the first browning and spoon it over the legs as the bird cooks; it becomes the sauce.
- The grilled breastButterfly a boneless breast and pound it to a half inch, as directed, then let it sit in oil, salt and pepper for two to four hours in the refrigerator, not at room temperature. Over a hot grill it needs only about 4 minutes a side; at that thickness it goes dry very quickly.
- YieldThe recipe states none. A 12 lb turkey roasted this way will serve about 8-10. The grilled breast is a separate, much smaller dish — one breast half feeds three or four.
Gentile opens by noting what many European cookbooks of the period noted: the turkey is an American bird. It reached Italy in the sixteenth century, generally traced to the Spanish, and the Italian tacchino is usually explained as an imitative name, from the bird's call; it settled in alongside older regional words for the bird, a reminder of the early confusion about where the New World actually was. The passage also shows what happened to the bird once it was naturalised: nothing here resembles the American Thanksgiving treatment of bread stuffing and gravy. Instead the turkey is handled like any other large Italian roast, studded with garlic and rosemary, wrapped in the flavour of cured pork fat, and finished with thinned tomato. The Italian Cook Book (1919) was written for American readers by Maria Gentile, and this entry reads as an explanation of a difference — a familiar bird, cooked in an unfamiliar way, for a public that assumed it already knew what turkey tasted like.