THE ART OF OPEN-HEARTH COOKING

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A TURKEY

A middling turkey will take an hour; a very large one, an hour and a quarter; a small one three quarters of an hour. You must paper the breast till it is near done enough, then take the paper off and froth it up. Your fire must be very good.

I've found that cooking-type parchment paper is best for this recipe, although ordinary typing paper will do in a pinch. A thin piece of pork flare fat tied on will also do. Foil, however, gives the meat a steamy" taste.

You'll notice that Ms. Glasse places great stress on having a brisk fire and recommends rather short cooking times. (Most of the old writers, in fact, suggest a mere 45 minutes to roast a large chicken or capon.) This is a far cry from the methods advocated by the present breed of home economists, who have us "roasting" our turkeys for hours on end at 300°F.

Of course, meats used to be cooked much rarer than they are now. Amelia Simmons-in her 1796 book, American Cookery (the first cookbook written by an American)—says firmly with regard to the roasting of beef that "rare done is the healthiest and [is] the taste of this age". Indeed it was, for Ms. Glasse wrote that a 10-pound piece of beef would be roasted in an hour and a half "at a good fire" (longer, in ''frosty weather").

Rare, medium rare, or well done, roast meats aren't what they used to be. Not unless you're a practitioner of the old and very traditional (though almost lost) art of openhearth cookery!

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