Why it works: Turkey and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓
Boiled Turkey
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and cook the turkey
Fill the turkey with oyster stuffing and tie the legs and wings close to the body.
Place the turkey breast down in salted boiling water.
Skim the water often and boil for about 2 hours, but do not let the skin break.
Serve and use the pot
Serve with oyster or celery sauce.
Boil a piece of pickled salt pork.
Serve a thin slice of the boiled pork on each plate.
Optionally, use bacon or ham instead of pork.
If desired, roll the turkey in a cloth dipped in flour, noting this may affect the flavor of the broth.
Save the broth for soup by adding seasonings similar to chicken soup.
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.
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Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together830 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Oyster + porktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,255 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Pork + hamtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,638 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together360 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together473 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Turkey
- Provides the main meat, which cooks through gently in the simmering water.
- Oyster stuffing
- Fills the cavity so its flavor seasons the meat from inside as it cooks.
The step that matters
Skim and avoid breaking the skin. Keeping the water below a rough boil stops the skin from splitting. Skimming removes foam that would otherwise cloud the broth and cling to the bird.
“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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