Turkey
A turkey weighing from eight to ten pounds requires fully three hours' cooking in a hot oven, and another hour must be added if from twelve to fifteen pounds in weight. After trussing, the skin should be thoroughly rubbed with soft butter, then dredged with salt and pepper and placed on a rack on a large pan; several thicknesses of paper are tied around the ends of the legs, and the breast is protected by a cover of heavy glazed paper. During the entire cooking the oven should be kept very hot, as a certain amount of heat is lost in the opening of the doors to baste. A mixture of butter and water is used for this purpose, and a little of this, kept hot at the side of the fire, should be poured over the turkey every ten minutes, as the more thorough the basting the better and juicier the result.
A turn-of-the-century roasting method built around a coal range with no thermometer and no reliable door seal. The technique is sound; the times and temperatures are not.
- "A hot oven" all the way throughThe book gives no figure; period sources gloss a "hot oven" as somewhere in the region of 400-450F. Holding a turkey at that heat for three to four hours risks drying the breast badly. Modern practice is to start hot for 20-30 minutes to set the skin, then drop to 325-350F for the remainder.
- The times are far too longThe times are long -- An 8-10 lb bird at 325-350F needs about 2 1/2 to 3 hours unstuffed, not "fully three hours" in a hot oven; a 12-15 lb bird runs roughly 3 to 3 3/4 hours. Some of the difference is likely down to the heat lost each time the door was opened to baste, which the writer acknowledges.
- Cook to temperature, not the clockThis is the hinge. An instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh, clear of bone, should read 165F, with the breast at 160-165F. Weight-based tables are a starting estimate only.
- Paper armourThe "heavy glazed paper" over the breast and the wrapped drumstick ends are the ancestors of a foil tent. Loose foil over the breast for the first two-thirds of roasting, removed at the end to brown, does the same job.
- Basting every ten minutesButter and water poured over the skin does not enter the meat, and each door opening drops the oven temperature sharply. Baste two or three times at most, or skip it and rely on butter rubbed under and over the skin.
- TrussingA light truss with kitchen twine, legs tied together and wings tucked, is enough. Tight trussing slows the thighs and pushes the breast further past done before they catch up.
- Salt earlierDredging with salt and pepper at the moment of roasting seasons only the surface. Salting the bird a day ahead, uncovered in the refrigerator, seasons more deeply and dries the skin for better browning.
- Resting and yieldRest the bird 25-30 minutes under loose foil before carving. Reckoning roughly a pound of bird per person, a 10 lb turkey serves eight to ten and a 12-15 lb bird ten to fourteen.
The turkey is a New World bird, domesticated in Mesoamerica and carried back to Europe in the sixteenth century, where the name is usually explained by a muddle over trade routes: English speakers are said to have associated the imported fowl with Turkish merchants. By the time this book appeared, the roast turkey was firmly the American holiday centrepiece. The obsessive basting instruction here reflects the equipment rather than the bird. Cooks working over a coal or wood range had no thermostat and no window, and the writer's warning about heat lost through the door is an admission of how much guesswork the process involved. The glazed paper shield continues the older practice of larding or laying buttered paper over roasting meat at the spit.