• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1319 0

of mace, four tablespoons of well-chopped parsley, four or five finely minced cloves of garlic, four cloves minus the heads and well-chopped, one half teaspoon of turmeric, four large, well-chopped onions, six well-chopped stalks of celery, one half teaspoon marjoram, one half teaspoon savory (summer savory if you can get it), and one tablespoon of poultry seasoning. [“Well chopped” means “medium-fine.”] Some like sage, some like thyme. Nobody, apparently, objects to poultry seasoning, which, ironically, contains both. Salt to taste. [I object to poultry seasoning. And I find the quantity here of ground dried herbs overpowering and acrid. For the poultry seasoning, I substitute 1 tablespoon each of fresh thyme and fresh sage. And I use three times the specified amount of finely chopped fresh oregano, fresh marjoram, and fresh summer savory. A teaspoon of salt should be enough.]

In another bowl dump three packages of breadcrumbs, bought at a bakery. [A pound and a half of fresh bread crumbs seems just right.] Add to this three quarters of a pound of ground veal and one quarter of a pound of ground fresh pork and a quarter of a pound of butter and all the fat (first rendered) you have been able to find and pry loose from the turkey. [I have explained this earlier.] Mix in each bowl the contents of each bowl. When each bowl is well mixed, mix the three of them together. And mix it well. Mix it with your hands. Mix it until your forearms and wrists ache. Then mix it some more. Now toss it enough so that it isn’t any longer a doughy mass.

Stuff your turkey, but not too fully. Pretty full, though. Stuff the neck and tie the end. Skewer the bird. Tie the strings. [Sewing up the bird and sewing the wings to the body are better than skewering.] Turn on your oven full force and let it get red-hot. [Do this an hour beforehand—the stuffing should not sit in the turkey while you wait.] Put your bird on the drip pan, or, best of all, breast down in a rack. In a cup make a paste consisting of the yolks of two eggs, a teaspoon of Colman’s mustard, a clove of minced garlic, a tablespoon of onion juice (run an onion through your chopper and catch the juice), a half teaspoon of salt, two pinches of cayenne pepper, a teaspoon of lemon juice, and enough sifted flour to make a stiff paste. Take a pastry brush or an ordinary big paintbrush and stand by. [Triple all the quantities for this paste or you’ll run out too soon. If you wrap the rack in heavily greased aluminum foil, it will not tear the turkey’s skin.]

Put your bird into the red-hot oven. Let it brown all over. Remove the turkey. Turn your oven down to 325 degrees. Now, while the turkey is sizzling hot, paint it completely all over with the paste. Put it back in the oven. The paste will have set in a few minutes. Drag it out again. Paint every nook and cranny of it once more. Put it back in the oven. Keep doing this until you haven’t any more paste left.

To the giblet-neck-liver-heart gravy that has been simmering add one cup of cider. [Better to add 3 cups of cider and 1 cup of water.] Don’t let it cook any more. Stir it well. Keep it warm on top of the oven. This is your basting fluid. Baste the bird every fifteen minutes! That means you will baste it from twelve to fifteen times. After the bird has cooked about an hour and a half turn it on its stomach, back in the air, and let it cook in that position until the last fifteen minutes, when you restore it to its back again. That is, unless you use a rack. If you use a rack don’t turn it on its back until the last half hour.

[I found the multiple rotations that Thompson calls for to be unnecessarily arduous and damaging to the bird. I would modify the previous three paragraphs by browning the bird, breast down, for about 15 minutes and the same time on its back, on a rack opened nearly all the way. Then paint the bird without turning it and leave it on its back for the rest of the roasting time.]

It ought to cook at least four hours and a half to five hours and a half. [Use the shorter time for an 18-pound turkey and the longer