Roast Turkey

Ingredients

• a hen turkey a year old
• a tablespoon of butter
• two teaspoons salt
• one tea-cup of butter

Method

1. 1

   Clean, stuff, truss, and lard the turkey.

2. 2

   Place in a moderately hot oven, add butter on the breast, and baste every ten minutes.

3. 3

   Season with salt halfway through cooking.

4. 4

   Dredge with flour in the last third of cooking, allowing it to brown.

5. 5

   Baste with drippings and serve when browned.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The new practical housekeeping (1890) by Estelle Woods Wilcox, page 465. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

a hen turkey a year old is best, weighing eight or ten pounds wnen dressed. Clean, stuff, truss and lard as directed in preface ; place in oven not quite as hot as for roasting meats (if the fire is very hot, lay a piece of brown paper, well greased over the fowl, to prevent scorching); put a tablespoon of butter in bits on the breast ; it will melt and run mto the dripping-pan, and is used to baste the fowl as roasting pro- gresses ; baste every ten minutes, watching the turkey as it begins to brown, very carefully, and turning it occasionally to expose all {>arts alike to the heat ; it should be moist and tender, not in the east scorched, blistered or shriveled, till it is a golden brown all over. For the first two-thirds of time required for cooking (the rule is twenty minutes to the pound and twenty minutes longer) t^e basting should keep the surface moistened so that it .will not crisp at all ; meantime the oven should be kept closed as much as pos- sible. A long gauntlet glove is a good thing to protect the hand and arm when basting. In turning pan, do it as quickly as possible ; season with two teaspoons salt when half done. In the last third of the time allowed for cooking, dredge with flour by withdrawing the pan partly from the oven (resting the end on the grating which falls down, or on a block of wood or a plain stool of the proper height kept for the purpose), and cover the breast, upper portion and sides thoroughly, using a fine sifter, return pan to oven, and let remain until the flour is well browned, then baste freely with drip- pings from pan, and flour again, repeating flouring and browning, allowing crust to grow crisper eacn time ; there will probably be time to repeat the process three or four times before finishing. Take care not to wash off flour by basting, always leaving in oven until all flour of last dredging is thoroughly browned. If it is necessary to turn the turkey in the pan, use a towel, and never stick it with a fork^ as it allows the juices to escape. In roasting a large turkey, a liberal allowance of butter for cooking, including gravy for serving in two successive days, is one tea-cup, but less may be used, accord- ing to taste or necessity for economy. Baste with* melted butter the last time, then dredge with flour ana serve when browned ; the en- tire surface will Ihen be a rich, frothy, brown crust, which breaks off in shells in carving, and makes the most savory of morsels. Keep hot while making the Giblet Gravy. Always be very careful in removing the skewers and strings not to break the crust. Roast Turkey

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.