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Boned Turkey

A roasted turkey served with a jelly made from pigs' feet and layered vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boned Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the turkey

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roll the turkeys in white paper well greased with lard.

  3. Place the turkeys in the oven to roast.

Make the jelly and layers

  1. Prepare a jelly from pigs' feet, seasoned with onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. In an oblong pan, layer some jelly, followed by slices of carrots, beets, hard boiled egg, parsley, cranberries, olives, lemon, and orange.

  3. Add layers of sliced turkey, seasoned sausage meat, and thin slices of pork.

  4. Pour more melted jelly over the layers.

  5. Set the pan aside to cool.

Serve

  1. Dip the pan in hot water to turn out the turkey when serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkeys
Form the main body of the dish and supply the sliced meat for the layers.
Pigs' feet jelly
Sets when cooled to bind the layers together and hold the molded shape.
Seasoned sausage meat
Adds savory richness and fat to the layered filling.
Hard boiled egg
Adds firm texture and mild flavor to the layered filling.

The step that matters

Set the pan aside to cool. The jelly must cool fully to set firmly; if it is unset or disturbed, the layers will slump and not turn out cleanly when the pan is dipped in hot water.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, pepper, carrot, egg, parsley, olive, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pepper, carrot, egg, parsley, olive, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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