Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Turkey

A turkey boiled in salted water with oyster stuffing, served with sauce and optional salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 boil

  1. Stuff the turkey with oyster stuffing and tie the legs and wings close to the body.

  2. Place the turkey breast down in salted boiling water.

  3. Skim the water often and boil for about 2 hours, ensuring the skin does not break.

Serve

  1. Serve with oyster or celery sauce.

  2. Boil a piece of salt pork and serve a thin slice on each plate.

  3. Optionally, roll the turkey in a cloth dipped in flour, but note this may affect the flavor of the broth.

  4. Save the broth for soup by adding seasonings similar to chicken soup.

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. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Oyster + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,255 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Pork + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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 gently in the simmering water until tender.
Oyster stuffing
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the bird as it cooks inside the turkey.
Salt pork
Adds salty, savory flavor to the broth and the serving slices.

The step that matters

Keeping the skin intact while boiling. Boiling at a hard rolling bubble can tear the skin and let it drop away from the meat. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer and skimming foam helps the skin stay whole and the broth clear.

“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.

More boiled turkey recipes

with Oyster Sauce 11Eggs 4with Celery Sauce 4with Oyster Stuffing 4Celery Sauce for 3 See all 186 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipes