Recipe no. 313 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 153.
Ingredients
- turkey
- chestnuts
- broth
- celery
- sausage meat
- bacon
- string
- oiled paper
- lard
Preparation
- Drawing the turkeyDraw a young turkey through the side
- Preparing the chestnutsPeel and cook the chestnuts with broth and celery
- Preparing the stuffingCool and mix the chestnuts with the sausage meat
- StuffingSeason and stuff the turkey
- Trussing and bardingSew up, truss, apply a strip of bacon
- ProtectingWrap in oiled paper
- CookingCook at a gentle heat at first, then increase, baste with lard
Reboul's text
Draw a turkey through the side, choosing a young one.
Peel a pound of fine chestnuts; cook them in a saucepan with a few spoonfuls of broth and a sprig of celery.
When they are cooked, let cool and mix them with 500 g of sausage meat; season strongly and stuff the turkey with it.
Sew up the openings, truss it solidly and apply on the breast a large strip of bacon, which you will hold in place with string.
It is a good idea, to protect it from scorching, given the fairly long time it must stay on the spit, to wrap it in two sheets of oiled paper.
One must not forget that since the bird is exceedingly slow to cook because it is stuffed, it should be given a gentle heat at the start and the heat increased towards the end; that is when you will remove the paper to salt it properly.
It goes without saying that it must be basted often with lard, which you will have put in the dripping pan.
When about to serve, skim the fat off the pan juices and strain them to send apart.
Small Provençal glossary for this recipe
Reboul writes in French: no Provençal word appears in this recipe, apart from the dish's name itself. The table below gives the Provençal equivalents of the words used, in mistralian spelling, translated by Lingua Nostra. Each form is attested in our Provençal-English dictionary; click to open the entry.
| Provençal | English |
|---|---|
| vuida | draw |
| amaroun | chestnuts |
| assaboura | season |
| farço | stuffing |
| brida | truss |
| papié | oiled paper |
| fiò | gentle heat |
| arrousa | baste |
| sahin | lard |
Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 313, page 153. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.