Although this dish has been degusted by our great great grandfathers,
and has been for upwards of a century one of the strongest pillars of
the art, I shall here describe it, as an old proverb justly reminds me
that a good thing can never get old. Truss the turkey as for boiling,
and to modernize it, lard neatly the right breast, roast thirty good
chesnuts which mix in a basin with one pound of sausage-meat highly
seasoned, stuff the breast of the turkey with it, and braise as in the
last article, when done place it upon your dish, and have ready the
following ragout: cut two pounds of lean bacon in long square pieces
about the size of walnuts, blanch them ten minutes in boiling water, put
two ounces of butter in a middling-sized stewpan, with the bacon, fry
till becoming rather yellowish, then add a tablespoonful of flour, mix
well, add by degrees three pints of good white stock, with a quart of
white sauce, stir over the fire till boiling, then put in forty button
onions, twenty fine heads of mushrooms, a bunch of parsley, one
bay-leaf, and two cloves; boil altogether, and when the onions are done
take them with the mushrooms and bacon out of the sauce with a colander
spoon, put them into a clean stewpan, with thirty chestnuts roasted
white, and eight sausages broiled, each one cut in three, reduce the
sauce, keeping it stirred till it becomes the thickness of brown sauce,
previously having simmered, and skimmed off all the grease, pass the
sauce through a tammie upon the other ingredients, make all hot
together, finish with a liaison of two yolks of eggs, and pour over and
round the turkey (except over the breast), which serve very hot. The old
style used to be brown, in that case substitute brown sauce for white
and omit the liaison.