Turkey Recipes

Note: The Mayflower passengers cooked wild turkeys. These recipes were not intended for big, fat, domestic turkeys. The four recipes come from Gervase Markham's 1630 edition of The English Housewife. Wild turkeys can be purchased from specialty meat dealers, and can still be hunted in many areas.

Roasting Turkeys

... if it be birds or fowl which you spit, then let the spit go through the hollow of the body of the fowl, and so fasten it with picks or skewers under the wings, about the thighs of the fowl, and at the feet or rump, according to your manner of trussing and dressing them.

... know the temperatures of fires for every meat, and which must have a slow fire, yet a good one, taking leisure in roasting, as chines of beef, swans, turkeys, peacocks, bustards, and generally any great large fowl ...

Capons, pheasants, chickens, and turkeys you shall roast [on a spit] with the pinions folded up, and the legs extended.

... if it be any kind of fowl you roast, when the thighs are tender, or the hinder parts of the pinions, at the setting on of the wings, are without blood, then be sure that your meat is fully enough roasted: yet for a better and more certain assuredness, you may thrust your knife into the thickest parts of the meat, and draw it out again, and if it bring out white gravy without bloodiness, then assuredly it is enough, and may be drawn with all speed convenient, after it hath been well based with butter not formerly melted, then dredged as aforesaid [in breadcrumbs], then basted over the dredging, and so suffered to take two or three turns, to make crisp the dredging, then dish it in a fair dish with salt sprinkled over it, and so serve it forth.

Boiling Young Turkeys

If you will boil chickens, young turkeys, peahens, or any house fowl daintily, you shall, after you have trimmed them, drawn them, trussed them, and washed them, fill their bellies as full of parsley as they can hold; then boil them with salt and water only till they be enough: then take a dish and put into it verjuice, and butter, and salt, and when the butter is melted, take the parsley out of the chickens' bellies, and mince it very small, and put it to the verjuice and butter, and stir it well together; then lay the chickens, and trim the dish with sippets, and so serve it forth.

Sauce for a Turkey

Take fair water, and set it over the fire, then slice good store of onions and put into it, and also pepper and salt, and good store of the gravy that comes from the turkey, and boil them very well together: then put to it a few fine crumbs of grated bread to thicken it; a very little sugar and some vinegar, and so serve it up with the turkey: or otherwise, take grated white bread and boil it in white wine till it be thick as a galantine, and in the boiling put in good store of sugar and cinnamon, and then with a little turnsole make it of a high murrey color, and so serve it in sauces with the turkey in the manner of a galantine.

Sauce for a Roast Capon or Turkey

To make an excellent sauce for a roast capon, you shall take onions, and having sliced and peeled them, boil them in fair water with pepper, salt, and a few bread crumbs. Then put unto it a spoonful or two of claret wine, the juice of an orange, and three or four slices of a lemon peel; all these shred together, and so pour upon the capon being broke upon.