To stuff a Turkey

History

Amelia Simmons gives two ways to bring a turkey to the table. The first, plainly titled to stuff a turkey, builds its stuffing from a grated wheat loaf worked with butter, finely chopped salt pork, eggs, and a handful of sweet marjoram, summer savory, parsley, and sage; the bird is filled and sewn shut. She adds that the same mixture answers for any wild fowl, with onions worked in for water fowl, or for a leg or loin of veal, so it is really a general stuffing for roasts rather than a turkey recipe alone.

The second preparation turns to a richer stuffing of soft wheat bread and beef suet bound with eggs and scented with sweet thyme and marjoram, sometimes loosened with a gill of wine. The stuffed bird is hung before a steady, solid fire and basted with salt and water until, in the period's cue for doneness, a steam rises from the breast; butter is then stirred into the gravy, flour dusted over the bird, and the whole basted once more. Two variations follow the main method: one drops the sweet herbs in favor of parsley cooked with potatoes, and another fills the bird entirely with boiled, mashed potatoes moistened with butter and seasoned with herbs.

What makes the roast a landmark sits in its closing line. Simmons directs that the turkey be served with boiled onions and cranberry sauce, alongside mangoes, pickles, or celery. It is one of the earliest printed pairings of roast turkey with cranberry sauce, and American Cookery is credited as the first cookbook to suggest serving cranberry with turkey. Both partners belong to the same continent: the turkey is a bird native to North America and the ancestor of the domesticated turkey, and the cranberry an American berry. Coming from the first cookbook written by an American, the pairing arrives here not as ceremony but as an ordinary serving suggestion, set down between the pickles and the celery.

Simmons herself attaches no occasion to it. Her turkey carries no holiday and no mention of who might sit down to it; it rests among the roasts as one more bird to stuff and hang before the fire. The record keeps her method and her cranberry-sauce line, and leaves the meaning later generations would fold into that plate to hands other than hers.

Ingredients

• 1 wheat loaf
• 1/4 pound butter
• 1/4 pound salt pork
• 2 eggs
• sweet marjoram
• summer savory
• parsley
• sage
• pepper and salt

Instructions

1. Grate a wheat loaf.
2. Mix in a quarter pound of butter, a quarter pound of finely chopped salt pork, 2 eggs, and a little sweet marjoram, summer savory, parsley, and sage.
3. Add pepper and salt if the pork does not season it enough.
4. Fill the bird with the stuffing and sew it up.
5. Use the same stuffing for any wild fowl, adding onions for water fowl, or for a leg of veal, fresh pork, or loin of veal.