Miss Parloa's kitchen companion

This is an expensive dish, owing to the high price of truffles. Roast Turkey with Chestnut Stuffing. Singe, draw, and wash a turkey weighing eight or ten pounds. Rub it, both inside and out, with one tablespoonful of salt. Stuff it with one of the three chestnut stuffings. Now truss it. Rub the back lightly and the breast and legs thickly with soft butter, and dredge thickly with flour. Place the turkey on its back on the rack in the dripping-pan. Pour one cupful of boiling water into the pan, and then place the turkey in a hot oven. Watch, to see that the turkey does not get scorched; and turn the pan, that the turkey may get brown on all sides. When it has been in the oven twenty-five minutes, begin to baste with the water in the pan and with salt, pepper, and flour. Baste every fifteen minutes until it is done. Be careful that the water in the pan does not boil dry. In the last fifteen minutes baste the breast with two table-spoonfuls of melted butter and a light dredging of flour. Serve with chestnut sauce. Chestnut Stuffing. — Shell and blanch fifty chestnuts, and boil for half an hour in water enough to coyer them. Drain off the water, and add to the nuts three tablespoonfuls of butter, a level table-spoonful of salt, and half a teaspooriful of pepper. Mix all these ingredients, and stuff the turkey with them. The chestnuts will be whole, dry, sweet, and tender when cooked in this manner. Here is another rule : Follow the foregoing receipt, only pulverize the chestnuts, and then add the seasoning. Still another rule, for a richer stuffing than those already described, may be given. Shell and blanch fifty chestnuts, and boil for half an hour. They may be used whole or pulverized. In either case add to them one pint of cooked meat — veal, mutton, or poultry — chopped fine, one table-spoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful of pepper, one teaspoonful of chopped parsley, half a teaspoonful of powdered thyme, and three table-spoonfuls of butter. Mix all these ingredients, and stuff the turkey. Braised Turkey. Make a stuffing as for truffled turkey. With this, stuff the crop and body of a plump young turkey weighing about eight pounds. Truss it. Now cut truffles into small squares, and trim one end of them to a point. Put the pointed end into a larding-needle, and draw them in this way into the breast of the turkey. Put two rows on each side of the breast and one row in each leg. Spread thin slices of salt pork over the breast and legs. Cover the turkey with a strong sheet of buttered paper. Fasten on the paper by passing a string around the bird. Spread in a braising-pan, large enough to hold the turkey, one-quarter of a pound of sliced salt pork, one gill each of chopped celery, turnip, carrot, and onion; Lay the turkey on this pork, breast up. Cover the pan, and place in a moderate oven. At the end of half an hour add one quart of hot chicken stock. Baste the turkey with this stock every fifteen minutes, and season well at the same time with salt and pepper. Cook in all for three hours. The last half-hour remove the cover of the braising-pan ; also the paper and pork from the breast of the turkey. Let the meat brown slightly.