To Roast a Turkey Mrs. Marion Harland's Way

This is an old American recipe for roasting a turkey; Mr.s Harland published Common Sense In The Household: A Manual Of Practical Housewifery in 1873, and her instructions on how to prepare the bird, with their nod to hygiene, are a sobering reminder of how far we have come. Also, the stuffing is nice.

After drawing the turkey, rinse out with several waters, and in next to the last mix a teaspoonful of soda. The inside of a fowl, especially if purchased in the market, is sometimes very sour, and imparts an unpleasant taste to the stuffing, if not to the inner part of the legs and side-bones. The soda will act as a corrective, and is moreover very cleansing. Fill the body with this water, shake well, empty it out, and rinse with fair water.

Then prepare a dressing of bread-crumbs, mixed with butter, pepper, salt, thyme or sweet marjoram, and wet with hot water or milk. You may, if you like, add the beaten yolks of two eggs, A little chopped sausage is esteemed an improvement when well incorporated with the other ingredients. Or, mince a dozen oysters and stir into the dressing; and, if you are partial to the taste, wet the bread-crumbs with the oyster-liquor. The effect upon the turkey-meat, particularly that of the breast, is very pleasant.

Stuff the craw with this, and tie a string tightly about the neck, to prevent the escape of the stuffing.

Then fill the body of the turkey, and sew it up with strong thread, This and the neck-string are to be removed when the fowl is dished.

In roasting, if your fire is brisk, allow about ten minutes to a pound; but it will depend very much upon the turkey's age whether this rule holds good. Dredge it with flour before roasting, and baste often; at first with butter and water, afterward with the gravy in the dripping-pan.

If you roast in an oven, and lay the turkey in the pan, put in with it a teacup of hot water. Many roast always upon a grating placed on the top of the pan. In that case the boiling water steams the underpart of the fowl, and prevents the skin from drying too fast or cracking. Roast to a fine brown, and if it threaten to darken too rapidly, lay a sheet of white paper over it until the lower part is also done.

Stew the chopped giblets in just enough water to cover them, and when the turkey is lifted from the pan, add these, with the water in which they were boiled, to the drippings; thicken with a spoonful of browned flour, web with cold water to prevent lumping, boil up once, and pour into the gravy-boat. If the turkey is very fat, skim the drippings well before putting in the giblets.

Serve with cranberry sauce, Some lay fried oysters in the dish around the turkey.

Note: The lack of precise quantities is quite typical of 19th century recipes.