Vintage123

On this, the last day of my Thanksgiving holiday entries, I decided to finish with a subject that even today would scare me if I actually had to bake the turkey myself. I am referring to the way to carve a turkey. The November 1907 issue of Delineator magazine had pages full of Thanksgiving articles, recipes, and decorating tips, and this article comes from that section. (The illustration above is actually from an ad in that same issue for Armour’s Extract of Beef that was all about basting the turkey. This ad, about how to make the turkey last a week, is the same.)

According to the article about How to Carve a Turkey,

“To carve a turkey neatly and economically is an art; to prepare the turkey for the oven in such a manner as to facilitate the work of a carver is a process that is based upon several hard-and-fast rules.”

And when all of the cleaning and trussing and carving is done, it is finally time to eat! Here, too, though, there were some basic instructions involved:

“In serving each person, the carver should place a piece of both white and dark meat on each plate, unless otherwise requested, and this should be followed by a generous spoonful of the stuffing. If parsley, cress, or some similar garnish has been used, a little may be serve with each portion.”

If you are celebrating Thanksgiving this week, have a very happy holiday, and I hope you have a lot of delicious food to eat, and time to spend it with people you love. I will be back again after the holidays with a normal blog post.