The heart and sweet bread are nice fried plainly, or dipped into a beaten egg and fine bread crumbs. They should be fried in lard.
Take out the inwards, wash both the inside and outside of the turkey. Prepare a dressing made of bread, soaked soft in cold water, (the water should be drained from the bread, and the bread mashed fine.) Melt a small piece of butter, and mix it with the dressing, or else put in salt pork, chopped fine; season it with salt and pepper; add sweet herbs if you like. An egg in the dressing, makes it cut smoother. Any kind of cooked meat is nice minced fine, and mixed with the dressing. If the inwards are used, they ought to be boiled very tender, as it is very difficult to cook them through while the turkey is roasting. Fill the crop and body of the turkey with the dressing, sew it up, tie up the legs and wings, rub on a little salt and butter. Roast it from two to three hours, according to its size; twenty-five minutes to every pound, is a good rule. The turkey should be roasted slowly at first, and basted frequently. A little water should be put into the dripping pan, when the meat is put down to roast. For a gravy to the turkey, take the liquor that the inwards are boiled in, put into it a little of the turkey drippings, set it where it will boil, thicken it with a little flour and water, previously mixed smooth. Season it with salt, pepper, and sweet herbs if you like. Drawn butter is used for boiled turkey. A turkey for boiling should be prepared in the same manner as one for roasting. If you wish to have it look white, tie it up in a cloth, unless you boil rice in the pot. If rice is used, put in two-thirds of a tea cup. A pound or two of salt pork, boiled with the turkey, improves it. If you wish to make a soup of the liquor in which the turkey is boiled, let it remain until the next day, then skim off the fat. Heat and season it.
If a goose is tender under the wing, and you can break the skin easily by running the head of a pin across the breast, there is no danger of its being tough. A goose should be dressed in the same manner, and roasted the same length of time as a turkey.
Chickens for roasting or boiling should have a dressing prepared like that for turkies. Half a tea cup of rice boiled with the chickens makes them look white. They will be less liable to break if the water is cold when they are put in. A little salt pork boiled with the chickens, improves them. If you do not boil pork with them they will need salt. Chickens for broiling should be split, the inwards taken out, and the chicken washed inside and out. Put the bony side down on the gridiron, and broil it very slowly until brown, then turn it, and brown it on the other side. About forty minutes is required to broil a common sized chicken. For roast chicken, boil the liver and gizzards by themselves, and use the water for gravy to the chickens—cut the inwards in slices, and put them in the gravy.
The chickens should be jointed, the inwards taken out, and the chickens washed. Put them in a stew pan with the skin side down; on each layer sprinkle salt and pepper; put in three or four slices of pork, just cover them with water, and let them stew till tender. Then take them up, mix a little flour and water together, and thicken the liquor they were stewed in, add a piece of butter of the size of a hen’s egg, then put the chickens back in the stew pan, and let them stew four or five minutes longer. When you have taken up the chickens, soak two or three slices of toast in the gravy, then put them in your platter, lay the chickens over the toast, and turn the gravy on them. If you wish to brown the chickens, stew them without the pork, till tender, then fry the pork brown, take it up, put in the chickens, and then fry until a light brown.