Prepare a nice, clear, brisk fire for it.
Make stuffing according to No. 374, or 376; stuff it under the breast, where the craw was taken out, and make some into balls, and boil or fry them, and lay them round the dish; they are handy to help, and you can then reserve some of the inside stuffing to eat with the cold turkey, or to enrich a hash (No. 533).
Score the gizzard, dip it into the yelk of an egg or melted butter, and sprinkle it with salt and a few grains of Cayenne; put it under one pinion and the liver under the other; cover the liver with buttered paper, to prevent it from getting hardened or burnt.
When you first put a turkey down to roast, dredge it with flour; then put about an ounce of butter into a basting-ladle, and as it melts, baste the bird therewith.
Keep it at a distance from the fire for the first half hour, that it may warm gradually; then put it nearer, and when it is plumped up, and the steam draws in towards the fire, it is nearly enough; then dredge it lightly with flour, and put a bit of butter into your basting-ladle, and as it melts, baste the turkey with it; this will raise a finer froth than can be produced by using the fat out of the pan.
A very large turkey will require about three hours to roast it thoroughly; a middling-sized one, of eight or ten pounds (which is far nicer eating than the very large one), about two hours; a small one may be done in an hour and a half.
Turkey poults are of various sizes, and will take about an hour and a half; they should be trussed, with their legs twisted under like a duck, and the head under the wing like a pheasant.
Fried pork sausages (No. 87) are a very savoury and favourite accompaniment to either roasted or boiled poultry. A turkey thus garnished is called "an alderman in chains."
Sausage-meat is sometimes used as stuffing, instead of the ordinary forcemeat. (No. 376, &c.)
MEM. If you wish a turkey, especially a very large one, to be tender, never dress it till at least four or five days (in cold weather, eight or ten) after it has been killed. "No man who understands good living will say, on such a day I will eat that turkey; but will hang it up by four of the large tail-feathers, and when, on paying his morning visit to the larder, he finds it lying upon a cloth prepared to receive it when it falls, that day let it be cooked."