Turkey Recipes: Southern-Style Roast Turkey

Make a stuffing of stale bread. Cut the crusts from a small loaf, grate the crumb, brown crusts crisp, crush, sift and mix well with the gratings. Shred finely through it four ounces fresh suet, and a lump of butter the size of an egg. Add a tiny heart of celery cut small, half a tart apple also cut fine, two dozen fat raisins, seeded, halved, and soaked for twelve hours in whiskey to cover, salt, pepper, and paprika to taste. Mix well, stuff the turkey but not too tight. Put a handful in the crop space, and fasten the skin neatly over. Truss your turkey firmly, rub all over with soft fat, then sprinkle with salt and pepper, and set upon a rack in a deep roasting pan, pour half an inch of water in the bottom, cover tight, put in a hot oven, and roast for an hour, then slack heat and finish. The turkey will brown thus covered, and be tenderer and sweeter than if crisped uncovered. The pan will hold gravy better than can be made otherwise.

From "Dishes & Beverages of the Old South", by Martha McCulloch-Williams, 1913

Turkey and Sausage Scallop

Butter a pudding dish and fill with alternate layers of cold minced turkey and cooked minced and cold sausage meat, seasoning slightly as you go. The sausage will supply nearly all the seasoning you wish. Pour in as much gravy or weak stock as the dish will hold; let it soak in for a few minutes and cover with a mush of bread crumbs, peppered, salted and soaked in cream or milk, then beaten smooth with an egg and a tablespoonful of butter melted. It should be half an inch thick. Cover and bake for ½ an hour, then uncover and brown. Serve at once, as the crust will soon fall.

-- From "The National Cook Book," by Marion Harland and Christine Terhune Herrick.

Turkey Recipes: Roast Turkey and Dressing

Prepare the dressing as follows: Three coffeecups of bread crumbs, made very fine; one teaspoonful salt, half teaspoonful pepper, one tablespoonful powdered sage, one teacup melted butter, one egg; mix all together thoroughly. With this dressing stuff the body and breast, and sew with a strong thread. Take two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, two of flour; mix to a paste. Rub the turkey with salt and pepper; then spread the paste over the entire fowl, with a few thin slices of sweet bacon.

Roll the fowl loosely in a piece of clean linen or muslin; tie it up; put it in the oven, and baste every fifteen minutes till done. Remove cloth a few moments before taking turkey from oven. A young turkey requires about two hours; an old one three or four hours. This can be tested with fork. Thicken the drippings with two tablespoonfuls of browned flour, mixed with one cup sweet cream.

This recipe is from "Recipes Tried and True, by the Ladies' Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church of Marion, Ohio."

Turkey Hash

* 2 Tb. butter
* 1/2 c. coarse rye-bread crumbs
* 1 small onion, sliced
* 2 c. finely chopped cold turkey
* 1/2 c. finely chopped raw potato
* 1/2 tsp. salt
* 1/8 tsp. pepper
* 1 pt. milk

Melt the butter in a saucepan. When brown, add to it the rye-bread crumbs and mix well. Then add the sliced onion, chopped turkey, potato, salt, and pepper. Cook for a short time on top of the stove, stirring frequently to prevent burning. Pour the milk over the whole, and place the pan in the oven or on the back of the stove. Cook slowly until the milk is reduced and the hash is sufficiently dry to serve. Serve on buttered toast.

Turkey Recipes: Roast Turkey

In America, roast turkey is usually considered as a holiday dish, being served most frequently in the homes on Thanksgiving day. However, at times when the price is moderate, it is not an extravagance to serve roast turkey for other occasions. Roasting is practically the only way in which turkey is prepared in the usual household, and it is by far the best method of preparation. Occasionally, however, a very tough turkey is steamed before roasting in order to make it sufficiently tender.

The preparation of roast turkey does not differ materially from the method given for the preparation of roast chicken. After the turkey is cleaned, drawn, and prepared according to the directions previously given, rub the inside of the cavity with salt and pepper. Then stuff with any desirable stuffing, filling the cavity and also the space under the skin of the neck where the crop was removed. Then sew up the opening, draw the skin over the neck and tie it, and truss the turkey by forcing the tip of each wing back of the first wing joint in a triangular shape and tying both ends of the legs to the tail. When thus made ready, place the turkey in the roasting pan so that the back rests on the pan and the legs are on top. Then dredge with flour, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place in a hot oven. When its surface is well browned, reduce the heat and baste every 15 minutes until the turkey is cooked. This will usually require about 3 hours, depending, of course, on the size of the bird. For basting, melt 4 tablespoonfuls of butter or bacon fat in 1/2 cupful of boiling water. Pour this into the roasting pan. Add water when this evaporates, and keep a sufficient amount for basting. Turn the turkey several times during the roasting, so that the sides and back, as well as the breast, will be browned. When the turkey can be easily pierced with a fork, remove it from the roasting pan, cut the strings and pull them out, place on a platter, garnish, and serve. Gravy to be served with roast turkey may be made in the manner mentioned for making gravy to be served with fried chicken.

Selecting a Good Turkey

Turkeys rank next to chickens in popularity as food. They are native to America and are perhaps better known here than in foreign countries. Turkey is a much more seasonal food than chicken, it being best in the fall. Cold-storage turkey that has been killed at that time, provided it is properly stored and cared for, is better than fresh turkey marketed out of season.

The age of a turkey can be fairly accurately told by the appearance of its feet. Very young turkeys have black feet, and as they mature the feet gradually grow pink, so that at more than 1 year old the feet will be found to be pink. However, as the bird grows still older, the color again changes, and a 3-year-old turkey will have dull-gray or blackish looking feet. The legs, too, serve to indicate the age of turkeys. Those of a young turkey are smooth, but as the birds grow older they gradually become rough and scaly. A young turkey will have spurs that are only slightly developed, whereas an old turkey will have long, sharp ones.

Turkeys are seldom marketed when they are very young. But in spite of the fact that this is occasionally done, the mature birds are more generally marketed. Turkeys often reach a large size, weighing as much as 20 to 25 pounds. A mature turkey has proportionately a larger amount of flesh and a smaller amount of bone than chicken; hence, even at a higher price per pound, turkey is fully as economical as chicken.

Chestnut Stuffing for Turkey

Put a dozen or fifteen large chestnuts into a saucepan of water, and boil them until they are quite tender, then take off the shells and skins, put into a mortar and pound them. Put four ounces of shredded beef suet into a basin, stir in one-half pound of bread crumbs, season with salt and pepper to taste, and squeeze in a little lemon juice. Mix in a pound of chestnuts and stuffing will be ready for use.