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Boiled Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with oyster and breadcrumb dressing, served with a sauce of oyster, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Stuff the turkey as you would for roasting.

  2. Make the dressing by mixing chopped oysters, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, thyme, and enough milk or water to moisten.

  3. Dredge a thin cloth with flour and wrap it around the turkey.

Boil and simmer

  1. Place the turkey in a pot of cold water with 1 teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil.

  2. Let the turkey simmer for 3 hours, skimming the surface occasionally.

Make the oyster sauce and serve

  1. For the oyster sauce, combine 1 cup of the boiling liquid with 1 cup of milk and 8 chopped oysters.

  2. Season the sauce with minced parsley and stir in 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with cold milk.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of butter to the sauce, bring to a boil, and serve in a tureen.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Turkey + thymetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Add briny flavor to the dressing and sauce, and tender body to the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and milk to form a moist, soft stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the dressing and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the oyster sauce so it coats the spoon.
Milk
Moistens the dressing and gives the oyster sauce a creamy body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the sauce. Flour must be mixed smooth with cold milk before it goes into hot liquid, because dry flour added directly forms lumps that do not disperse. Stirring while it comes to a boil lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, oyster, bread, butter, pepper, milk, sauce):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, oyster, bread, butter, pepper, milk, sauce. 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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