Roast turkey
Roast turkey—the preparation of the whole bird as a meal for a large group of people—has a long tradition in North America that dates back to the time when wild turkeys were shot to be roasted on the campfire and continues to modern times when a domesticated turkey is prepared in the oven to be served at a family gathering, typically on Thanksgiving and also on Christmas Day. Turkeys, which originated in the Americas, also have a long tradition of being prepared in European countries such as England and France for festive occasions. Because of the large size of the typical turkey, it is almost always roasted whole rather than being cut into separate pieces for other types of preparation, as for the literally thousands of recipes for chicken for instance.
Because of industrial breeding processes, a medium-sized turkey of today would have been considered a very large turkey 50 years ago. Recipes for roast turkey dating to the mid-20th century often call for turkeys weighing between six and eight pounds. Today a separate, boned turkey breast can be purchased that typically weighs the same amount, while whole turkeys weighing 20 to 30 pounds are easily found. Because of the industrialization of the today's typical turkey, they have become increasingly difficult to roast satisfactorily: even the most talented home cooks find it difficult to roast a turkey so that the quick-cooking breast meat remains moist and tender while, at the same time, the thighs are thoroughly cooked. Many techniques and methods have been developed and proposed for the apparently simple roasting of a single bird: there are high-temperature recipes; very low-temperature recipes; mixed-temperature recipes; recipes in which the bird is cooked until the breast meat reaches a certain temperature and is then removed and kept apart while the rest of the turkey continues to cook. There are also thousands of recipes for various kinds of stuffings that can be cooked inside the roasting turkey. Each country has its own traditions for typical stuffings; although most of them involve breadcrumbs in one form or another, ingredients as exotic as oysters and chestnuts can also be found.