ROAST TURKEY
Draw, with care not to break the gall-bag. Wash out the cavity three times with cold water, adding a little soda to the second water. You can not be too careful in this part of your task.
Fill the body and craw with some one of the stuffings or “dressings” given below. Sew up the body and tie the skin covering the craw securely about the “scrag” or neck with cotton twine. Bind the legs and wings snugly to the body with cotton tape or strips of muslin. If the fowl be rather scrawny cover the breast with thin slices of fat salt pork. Put upon the grating of your covered roaster. Pour a cupful of boiling water over it to sear the skin and keep in the juices; cover and cook fifteen minutes to the pound, quite fast for twelve minutes or so, afterward steadily but slowly. Baste four times, each time very thoroughly, with the gravy from the pan.
A quarter of an hour before taking the turkey up, uncover and wash over with butter, then dredge with flour, and shut up in the oven to brown.
Make the gravy by stirring into the contents of the dripping-pan (when you have removed the turkey and are keeping it hot) the giblets, minced almost to powder, a tablespoonful of browned flour wet up with cold water, salt and pepper to taste. Skim before you add anything. Boil one minute and pour into a gravy-boat.
Always serve cranberry sauce with turkey, when you can get it.
Bread dressing for turkey
To a large cupful of crumbs allow a tablespoonful of minced fat pork. Season with pepper and, if you like, a little minced parsley. A little onion juice is an improvement. Moisten very slightly with cream, or milk.
Sausage dressing for turkey
Make as in last recipe, substituting sausage-meat for the pork. If partially cooked before it goes into the dressing, it is more wholesome.
Oyster stuffing for turkey
Make a stuffing for turkey in the ordinary way of dried breadcrumbs seasoned with parsley, thyme and sweet marjoram, and moistened with melted butter. To this add twenty small oysters chopped fine, and with this stuff the breast of the turkey.
Or to the ordinary seasoned bread-stuffing for a turkey add two dozen small oysters, moisten the crumbs slightly with the oyster liquor, and fill the breast of the turkey with the mixture.
Chestnut stuffing for turkey
Boil one quart of the large French or Italian chestnuts, shell and peel them. Mash smooth and rub into them two tablespoonfuls of butter, and salt and white pepper to taste. Stuff the turkey with this as you would any other kind of dressing.
Fillets of turkey with rice
Skin the breast of a plump turkey, and slice away the breast. Use a sharp knife and hold it almost horizontal while at work. The slices should be nearly half an inch thick, and as nearly uniform in size as possible. Dip in beaten egg, then in salted and peppered cracker-crumbs; again in the egg, and once more in the crumbs. Set on the ice while you cook the rice.
Put one cupful of clear chicken or turkey stock into a saucepan; add a cupful of rice, one-half teaspoonful of onion juice, and the same of salt, and simmer slowly until the liquid is absorbed. When the rice is tender add two tablespoonfuls of butter; one tablespoonful of grated cheese, and season to taste. Cover and let it stand at the side of the fire until the fillets are ready. Heat five or six spoonfuls of pure salad oil slowly in a frying-pan, and when it boils, cook the fillets in it to a nice brown. Mound the savory rice in the center of a hot dish and lay the fillets about it.
When properly made this is an elegant entrée.
Roast turkey, réchauffé
When but half of a large turkey has been cut away, the remainder can be made presentable for a second serving by “braising” it thus:
Cut very thin slices of fat salt pork and cover the untouched side with them, binding in place with soft twine. Lay the turkey, cut-side downward, in your covered roaster; pour a large cupful of weak stock or gravy under the grating, put on the lid and cook one hour, slowly, basting several times with the gravy in the pan below the roast. Take up the turkey, remove the pork, dredge with flour and set back in the oven, basting it with butter to “glaze” it as soon as the flour is wet through. Shut up to brown when you have drained away the gravy.
Strain this through a colander, thicken with browned flour, add half a can of minced champignons, cook two minutes, and pour into a boat.
Scallop of turkey and oysters
Cut cold roast or boiled turkey into inch-lengths, free from skin and gristle, and put a layer in the bottom of a buttered bake-dish. Season with salt and pepper, dot with butter and cover with minced raw oysters. Season this layer, scatter fine crumbs over it, put in more seasoned turkey, and go on in this order until your materials are used up. Pour in, then, a cupful of gravy made by boiling down bones and stuffing in a quart of water until reduced to one-third the original quantity of liquid, and straining out the bones. Cover with fine crumbs, dot with butter and bake, covered, forty-five minutes, then brown. You may omit the oysters, and have a plain turkey scallop.
Or substitute chopped mushrooms for the minced oysters.
Turkey and sausage pudding
This is a good way of using yesterday’s turkey, if there is not a sightly half left to be set on again.
Into a buttered bake-dish put a layer of turkey, cut—not chopped—into half-inch lengths. Drop bits of butter over it, but no other seasoning. Cover with minced, cooked sausage-meat, and this with three or four olives chopped fine. Proceed in this way until the dish is ready for the crust. Pour in a cupful of rich gravy made of bones and stuffing; cover with a good biscuit-dough half an inch thick; cut a hole in the middle and bake, covered, three-quarters of an hour, then brown.
Ragout of turkey
Break the carcass of a roast turkey all to pieces, and chop what remnants of stuffing you have. Add a quart of cold water, and cook slowly until you have but a cupful of liquid. Strain and let it get cold. Skim off the fat, season with onion juice, kitchen bouquet, salt and paprika, and set over the fire with the turkey meat, cut into neat cubes, and a half cupful of champignons (or fresh mushrooms, if you have them). Bring quickly to a boil, thicken well with browned flour, boil up, add a glass of claret and serve. Lay sippets of fried bread around the ragout.
Boiled turkey
An undeniably tough turkey would be better boiled than roasted.
Clean, wash and fill with oyster-stuffing, for which a recipe was given a few pages back. Truss closely and sew up in a clean piece of white mosquito-netting. Lay in a pan and pour boiling water all over it from the tea-kettle, slowly, to toughen the skin and keep in the juices. Roll the turkey over and over in his hot bath, take out at the end of two minutes; put into a pot, cover deep with cold water, and heat gradually to a boil. Cook fifteen minutes to the pound, always gently. If the turkey be large and old, give him twenty minutes for each pound. Take the pot from the range, leave it covered for twenty minutes with the bird in it. Take him out, unwrap quickly, dish, wash freely with hot butter well-seasoned with salt and white pepper; pour a few spoonfuls of hot drawn butter over him, and serve. Send oyster sauce around with boiled turkey.