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Mrs Beeton's Christmas Turkey

1861

Mrs Beeton's Christmas

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    Mrs Beeton's iconic Book of Household Management was first published in 1861. It not only contains over 2000 recipes, but is also a complete guide to running a household. The Book was aimed at the expanding middle classes, many of whom would recently have stepped up the social scale, and would therefore need advice on etiquette. Here Mrs Beeton describes 'Christmas dinner with the middle classes of this empire'. She conjures up a cosy image of a father at the dinner table 'carving his own fat turkey', writing that she 'can hardly imagine an object of greater envy'.

     

    Shelfmark: c133 c5.

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    Mrs Beeton's Christmas Turkey

    Original text:

     

    ROAST TURKEY.

        1005. A noble dish is a turkey, roast or boiled. A Christmas dinner with the middle classes of this empire, would scarcely be a Christmas dinner without its turkey; and we can hardly imagine an object of greater envy than is presented by a respected portly pater-familias carving, at the season devoted to good cheer and genial charity, his own fat turkey, and carving it well. The only art consists, as in the carving of a goose, in getting from the breast as many fine slices as possible; and all must have remarked the very great difference in the large number of people whom a good carver will find slices for, and the comparatively few that a bad carver will succeed in serving. As we have stated in both the carving of a duck and goose, the carver should commence cutting slices close to the wing from, 2 to 3, and then proceed upwards towards the ridge of the breastbone: this is not the usual plan, but, in practice will be found the best. The breast is the only part which is looked on as fine in a turkey, the legs being very seldom cut off and eaten at table: they are usually removed to the kitchen, where they are taken off, as here marked, to appear only in a form which seems to have a special attraction at a bachelor's supper-table, - we mean devilled: served in this way, they are especially liked and relished.

        A boiled turkey is carved in the same manner as when roasted.

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