Roast Turkey
Source: Abby Fisher, 1881
History
Roast Turkey is recipe No. 21 in "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking" (San Francisco, 1881). Abby Fisher's directions are exact: "First cleanse well and take the craw from the turkey. Make stuffing of light bread chopped fine, season with butter, pepper and salt; then stuff the body completely full, also where the craw was." The bird is basted with butter or lard, then basted continually with its own juices while roasting, and the gravy is made by browning a tablespoonful of flour in the pan. Her roast pig recipe later refers back to this one as the standard — "roasted the same way you would a turkey" — so this is the method the rest of her roasting hangs on.
The turkey is a bird of the Americas, and it was domesticated by Indigenous people: ancient Mesoamericans in central Mexico domesticated the subspecies "using its meat and eggs as major sources of protein," a process thought to have occurred at least 2,000 years ago. () Beyond that documented background for the bird itself, the record documents no specific earlier origin for Fisher's own preparation.
Fisher was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in June 1831 to Abbie Clifton. Genealogical research in San Francisco records identifies her father as James J. Andrews, an Orangeburg planter who held some seventy people in slavery, and an 1869 receipt from the Freedman's Savings and Trust in Mobile records her under her mother's name. Before 1865, censuses recorded only an enslaver's name with the age and sex of those he held, so no surviving record names Fisher herself; Karen Hess, who rediscovered her book, noted that absence of documentation. She could neither read nor write and dictated the book from "an experience of upwards of thirty-five years," having already won a diploma at the 1879 Sacramento State Fair and two medals at the 1880 San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair.
Ingredients
- turkey
- light bread
- butter
- pepper
- salt
- lard
- 1 tablespoon flour
- water
Instructions
- Cleanse the turkey well and remove the craw.
- Make a stuffing of finely chopped light bread, seasoned with butter, pepper, and salt.
- Stuff the body of the turkey completely full, including the cavity where the craw was removed.
- Place the turkey in a pan and baste with butter or lard.
- Put the turkey to roast.
- While it is cooking, keep basting it regularly with the juices that come from the turkey.
- When the turkey is cooked, take a tablespoonful of flour and brown it in the pan.
- Add a little water and stir together for the gravy.