Share
  • Home
  • Recipes
  • 4 Intriguing Ways to Cook Turkey: Recipes From the 1800s

4 Intriguing Ways to Cook Turkey: Recipes From the 1800s

How will you be cooking your turkey this year? Chances are, you will be doing it the same way you and your family have always done it. However, this year has been very different from the previous ones, so perhaps it is time to embark on a new culinary adventure, as well? And by new, we mean the well-forgotten old. Spice up your holiday dinner without sacrificing tradition with these more-than-a-century-old recipes for ways to cook a turkey.

The following turkey recipes are from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management — an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, circa 1861. They include instructions for cooking boiled turkey, devilled turkey, hashed turkey, and roast turkey. You can’t get much better than a vintage recipe for a classic like this. Without further ado, we bring you recipes that will breathe new life into your holiday feast.

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients:

  • whole turkey
  • beef sirloin
  • 2 onions
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 bunch herbs
  • salt, ground black pepper to taste
  • ½ blade of mace
  • 1 tsp flour
  • 2 cups water

Instructions:

  1. Make forcemeat stuffing. Chop onions, carrot, and herbs and grind ½ blade of mace.
  2. Combine beef sirloin with the above ingredients, season with salt and pepper.
  3. Stew for 2 hours until gravy is reduced by half and thickened.
  4. Strain the gravy and stir in flour; let cool. Set the solids aside.
  5. Skim off all the fat and add back the meat before heating it up again. Stuff the bird and proceed to boiling it.
  6. Boil the turkey. Once you have trussed and stuffed the bird, put it into enough hot water to cover it.
  7. Bring to a boil and remove all the scum.
  8. Let simmer for an hour and a half (more if the bird is bigger).

Deviled Turkey

Ingredients:

  • 2 turkey legs
  • dried mustard
  • salt, ground black pepper to taste
  • cayenne pepper to taste

Instructions:

  1. Core turkey legs with a sharp knife, season them with salt, pepper, cayenne, and dried mustard. Refrigerate overnight.
  2. Broil until crisp and brown.
  3. Top with cold butter and serve hot.

Hashed Turkey

Ingredients:

  • cold roast turkey leftovers
  • 1 onion
  • salt, ground black pepper to taste
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 turnip
  • a blade of mace
  • herbs to taste
  • 1 tbsp mustard ketchup
  • 1 tbsp port
  • butter to taste
  • flour to taste

Instructions:

  1. Cut onion into slices, grind mace, chop carrot, turnip, and herbs.
  2. Cut the turkey into neat joints. Reserve the best pieces for the hash.
  3. Pop the remaining pieces into a pan combined with onion, carrot, turnip, mace, herbs, salt and pepper, and water.
  4. Let simmer for an hour.
  5. Strain the gravy, thicken it with butter and flour and add ketchup and port.
  6. Lay in the pieces of turkey to warm through.

Roast Turkey

Ingredients:

  • whole turkey
  • beef sirloin
  • 2 onions
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 bunch herbs
  • salt, ground black pepper to taste
  • ½ blade of mace
  • 1 tsp flour
  • 2 cups water

Instructions:

  1. Make forcemeat stuffing. Chop onions, carrot, and herbs and grind ½ blade of mace.
  2. Combine beef sirloin with the above ingredients, season with salt and pepper.
  3. Stew for 2 hours until gravy is reduced by half and thickened.
  4. Strain the gravy and stir in flour; let cool. Set the solids aside.
  5. Skim off all the fat and add back the meat before heating it up again. Stuff the bird and proceed to roasting it.
  6. Roast the turkey. Preheat the oven to 425° F.
  7. Having dressed and stuffed the turkey, fasten a sheet of buttered paper on to its breast and pop it in the oven. Cook 15 minutes for every pound of turkey (e.g., 8 lb turkey roasts for 2 hours).
  8. About 15 minutes before serving, remove the paper and dredge the bird lightly with flour.
    Put a piece of butter into a basting-ladle and baste the turkey with it as it melts.

We hope you enjoyed these four intriguing ways to cook a turkey, and you will attempt to one or two. Get inspired, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your fellow turkey-eaters! What’s a Thanksgiving dish you swear by? Please tell us in the comments, as we would love to know.

Valerie

I am an English major with a love of languages and fiction, and with an incurable travel bug. In my free time, I read fantasy, drink copious amounts of coffee, and like to go see movies. Culinary art means everything to me. My main hypostasis is the taster, though. The music school has taught me to appreciate the symphony of airy meringues, to create harmonious overtures of light snacks, hard rock of meat, fish, and vegetables on the grill. Choir classes have accustomed me to hear and feel the people nearby and create perfect harmonies of sounds.

397 Comments Hide Comments

all the time i used to read smaller articles
that as well clear their motive, and that is also happening with this
article which I am reading now.

Good day! I could have sworn I’ve been to this site before but after browsing through
some of the post I realized it’s new to me. Anyhow, I’m definitely delighted I found it and
I’ll be book-marking and checking back frequently!

I really like what you guys tend to be up too. This type of clever work and exposure!
Keep up the superb works guys I’ve included you guys to
blogroll.

Unquestionably believe that which you stated.
Your favorite justification seemed to be on the
net the simplest thing to be aware of. I say to you, I certainly get annoyed while people
think about worries that they plainly do not know about. You managed to hit
the nail upon the top as well as defined out
the whole thing without having side effect , people could
take a signal. Will likely be back to get more. Thanks

Thank you for the good writeup. It if truth
be told used to be a entertainment account it. Glance complex to more added agreeable from you!
However, how can we keep up a correspondence?

Having read this I believed it was really informative.
I appreciate you spending some time and effort to
put this article together. I once again find myself spending a lot of time both reading and commenting.
But so what, it was still worthwhile!

You’ve made some decent points there. I checked on the internet for more information about the issue and found most individuals will go along with your views on this website.

I’m extremely inspired together with your writing talents
as neatly as with the structure in your weblog. Is this a paid
subject or did you modify it yourself? Either way stay up the nice
high quality writing, it’s rare to see a nice
weblog like this one nowadays..

I used to be recommended this blog by means of my cousin. I am not positive whether or not this publish is written by means of
him as nobody else understand such distinct about my problem.
You’re amazing! Thanks!

Howdy are using WordPress for your site platform? I’m new to the
blog world but I’m trying to get started and create my own.
Do you need any html coding expertise to make your own blog?
Any help would be really appreciated!

Hey just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you know a few of the
pictures aren’t loading properly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue.
I’ve tried it in two different web browsers and both show
the same outcome.

It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d without a doubt donate to this fantastic blog!

I guess for now i’ll settle for bookmarking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account.
I look forward to fresh updates and will talk about this website with my Facebook group.
Talk soon!

My programmer is trying to persuade me to move to .net from PHP.
I have always disliked the idea because of the costs.

But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using WordPress on a number of
websites for about a year and am anxious about switching to another platform.
I have heard fantastic things about blogengine.net.
Is there a way I can import all my wordpress content into it?

Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated!

Hey There. I found your blog using msn. This is a really well written article. I’ll make sure to bookmark it and come back to learn extra of your useful info. Thank you for the post. I will definitely return.

Hi, i think that i noticed you visited my website so i came to go back the prefer?.I am attempting to find things to improve my website!I suppose its ok to make use of a few of your ideas!!

I am not sure where you are getting your information, but good topic. I needs to spend some time learning much more or understanding more. Thanks for magnificent info I was looking for this information for my mission.

Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point. You definitely know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on just posting videos to your site when you could be giving us something enlightening to read?

Pretty nice post. I simply stumbled upon your blog and wished to say that I have truly loved browsing your weblog posts. After all I will be subscribing for your feed and I am hoping you write once more soon!

Someone necessarily lend a hand to make seriously articles I might state. This is the first time I frequented your web page and so far? I surprised with the analysis you made to make this particular submit extraordinary. Great activity!

Hmm is anyone else encountering problems with the pictures on this blog loading? I’m trying to find out if its a problem on my end or if it’s the blog. Any feed-back would be greatly appreciated.

Hello There. I found your blog using msn. This is an extremely well written article. I’ll make sure to bookmark it and return to read more of your useful information. Thanks for the post. I’ll definitely comeback.

hey there and thank you for your information – I have certainly picked up something new from right here. I did however expertise some technical points using this web site, as I experienced to reload the website lots of times previous to I could get it to load properly. I had been wondering if your web host is OK? Not that I’m complaining, but slow loading instances times will very frequently affect your placement in google and can damage your quality score if ads and marketing with Adwords. Anyway I am adding this RSS to my e-mail and can look out for much more of your respective interesting content. Ensure that you update this again soon.

Good day! I know this is kinda off topic however I’d figured I’d ask. Would you be interested in exchanging links or maybe guest authoring a blog article or vice-versa? My site addresses a lot of the same topics as yours and I believe we could greatly benefit from each other. If you’re interested feel free to shoot me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you! Great blog by the way!
Pump muscles web page how to pump the press

Nice blog here! Also your website loads up fast! What host are you using? Can I get your affiliate link to your host? I wish my site loaded up as fast as yours lol
cómo balancear bíceps web site cómo bombear músculo

Appreciating the time and effort you put into your website and detailed information you provide. It’s awesome to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same outdated rehashed information. Fantastic read! I’ve bookmarked your site and I’m adding your RSS feeds to my Google account.

I simply couldn’t depart your website before suggesting that I extremely loved the standard info a person provide for your guests? Is going to be again ceaselessly to check up on new posts

I am curious to find out what blog platform you’re using? I’m having some minor security problems with my latest website and I would like to find something more safeguarded. Do you have any recommendations?

Thank you, I’ve recently been searching for information approximately this topic for ages and yours is the best I’ve came upon so far. But, what about the conclusion? Are you positive about the supply?

Just desire to say your article is as amazing. The clarity in your post is simply great and i can assume you are an expert on this subject. Well with your permission allow me to grab your RSS feed to keep updated with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please continue the enjoyable work.

I’m really enjoying the theme/design of your site. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility issues? A small number of my blog audience have complained about my blog not working correctly in Explorer but looks great in Firefox. Do you have any tips to help fix this issue?

Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your weblog and
wished to say that I’ve really enjoyed browsing your weblog posts.
In any case I will be subscribing in your rss feed and I’m hoping you write once more
very soon!

Heya i am for the first time here. I came across this board and I find It truly useful & it helped me out much. I hope to give something back and help others like you helped me.

Wonderful goods from you, man. I’ve understand your stuff previous to and you are just extremely great. I actually like what you’ve acquired here, really like what you are saying and the way in which you say it. You make it entertaining and you still care for to keep it wise. I can’t wait to read much more from you. This is really a terrific site.