INGREDIENTS
Those New World imports, turkeys, get similar treatment and starring roles on the festive table as capons and farm-raised hens (like the Mayoress’s Stewed Christmas Chicken, page 217). The first turkeys arrived in Spain in the early sixteenth century from the island of Hispaniola—the Caribbean island divided by modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where Columbus had landed on his voyage to “the Indies”—and spread rapidly around Spain and then Europe. The breeding was no doubt helped by King Ferdinand sending out instructions that every ship returning from the New World should bring back ten turkeys, half males and the other half females, to breed.