A noble dish is a turkey, roast or boiled. A Christmas dinner, with the middle classes of this empire, would scarcely be a Christmas dinner without its turkey; and we can hardly imagine an object of greater envy than is presented by a respected portly pater-familias carving, at the season devoted to good cheer and genial charity, his own fat turkey, and carving it well.

The only art consists, as in the carving of a goose, in getting from the breast as many fine slices as possible and all must have remarked the very great difference in the large number of people whom a good carver will find slices for, and the comparatively few that a bad carver will succeed in serving.

As we have stated in both the carving of a duck and goose, the carver should commence cutting slices close to the wing from, 2 to 3, and then proceed upwards towards the ridge of the breastbone; this is not the usual plan, but, in practice will be found the best. The breast is the only part which is looked on as fine in a turkey, the legs being very seldom cut off and eaten at table: they are usually removed to the kitchen, where they are taken off as here marked to appear only in a form which seems to have a special attraction at a bachelor's supper table, – we mean devilled: served in this way, they are especially liked and relished. A boiled turkey is carved in the same manner as when roasted.

FROM: The Book of Household Management by Isabella Mary Beeton