How to Cook a Turkey Rub the bird inside and out with salt and pepper. In a stewpan put the chopped gizzard and the neck and heart, to which add one bay leaf, one teaspoon of paprika, a half teaspoon of coriander, a clove of garlic, four cups of water, and salt to taste. Let this simmer while you go ahead with the dressing. Dice the apple, one orange, in a bowl and add to this bowl a large can of crushed pineapple, the grated rind of one half lemon, one can of drained water chestnuts, three tablespoons of chopped, preserved ginger. In another bowl put two teaspoons of Colman's mustard, two teaspoons of caraway seed, three teaspoons of celery seed, two teaspoons of poppy seed, two and a half teaspoons of oregano, one well-crushed large bay leaf, one teaspoon black pepper, one half teaspoon of mace, four tablespoons of well-chopped parsley, four or five finely minced cloves of garlic, four cloves, minus the heads and well chopped, one half teaspoon of turmeric, four large, well-chopped onions, six well-chopped stalks of celery, one half teaspoon marjoram, one half teaspoon savory (summer savory if you can get it), and one tablespoon of poultry seasoning. Some like sage, some like thyme. Nobody, apparently, objects to poultry seasoning, which, ironically, contains both. Salt to taste. In another bowl dump three packages of bread crumbs, bought at a bakery. Add to this three quarters of a pound of ground veal and one quarter of a pound of ground fresh pork and a quarter of a pound of butter and all the fat (first rendered) you have been able to find and pry loose from the turkey. Mix in each bowl the contents of each bowl. When each bowl is well mixed, mix the three of them together. And mix it well. Mix it with your hands. Mix it until your forearms and wrists ache. Then mix it some more. Now toss it enough so that it isn't any longer a doughy mass. Stuff your turkey, but not too full. Pretty full, though. Stuff the neck and tie the end. Skewer the bird. Tie the strings. Turn on your oven full force and let it get red hot. Put your bird on the drip pan, or, best of all, breast down in a rack. In a cup make a paste consisting of the yolks of two eggs, a teaspoon of Colman's mustard, a clove of minced garlic, a tablespoon of onion juice (run an onion through your chopper and catch the juice), a half teaspoon of salt, two pinches of cayenne pepper, a teaspoon of lemon juice, and enough sifted flour to make a stiff paste. Take a pastry brush or an ordinary big paintbrush and stand by. Put your bird into the red-hot oven. Let it brown all over. Remove the turkey. Turn your oven down to 325 degrees. Now, while the turkey is sizzling hot, paint it completely all over with the paste. Put it back in the oven. The paste will have set in a few minutes. Drag it out again. Paint every nook and cranny of it once more. Put it back in the oven. Keep doing this until you haven't any more paste left. To the giblet-neck-liver-heart gravy that has been simmering add one cup of cider. Don't let it cook any more. Stir it well. Keep it warm on top of the oven. This is your basting fluid. Baste the bird every fifteen minutes! That means you will baste it from twelve to fifteen times. After the bird has cooked about an hour and a half turn it on its stomach, back in the air, and let it cook in that position until the last fifteen minutes, when you restore it to its back again. That is, unless you use a rack. If you use a rack don't turn it on its back until the last half hour. It ought to cook at least four hours and a half to five hours and a half. When you remove it the turkey will be dead black. You will think, "My God! I have ruined it." Be calm. Take a tweezer and pry loose the paste coating. It will come off readily. Beneath this burnt, harmless, now worthless shell the bird will be golden and dark brown, succulent, giddy-making with wild aromas, crisp and crunchable and crackling. The meat beneath this crazing panorama of lip-wetting skin will be wet, juice will spurt from it in tiny fountains high as the handle of the fork plunged into it; the meat will be white, crammed with mocking flavor, delirious with things that rush over your palate and are drowned and gone as fast as you can swallow; cut a little of it with a spoon, it will spread on bread as eagerly and readily as soft wurst. You do not have to be a carver to eat this turkey; speak harshly to it and it will fall apart. This is the end of it. All but the dressing. No pen, unless it were filled with Thompson's gravy, can describe Thompson's dressing, and there is not paper enough in the world to contain the thoughts and adjectives it would set down, and not marble enough to serve for its monuments. ------------------------------ ... I always ran it just around Thanksgiving. The first year that column ran, it was received with broad grins. All my readers thought I was kidding. The second year a few tried it, the rest kept on grinning. The third year there were more converts. About the time of the fourth year, the Domestic Science Editor of the paper asked me if I wouldn't give a lecture on How to Cook a Turkey before a group of women in the paper's auditorium. Naturally, feeling the way I feel about women and food, I said yes. [This guy's political views are a little incorrect. He's a Republican, too. --BH] I was sorry later. When I got on that damned rostrum and looked out at those bright, merry faces all gathered to see a mere man make a jerk of himself fooling around with stuff they felt belonged in a woman's province, it was al