Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Turkey

A whole turkey boiled with a stuffing of bread, lemon peel, oysters, eggs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turkey and bread work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 822 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Clean and draw the turkey, cutting off the legs and tucking the thighs into the body, then tie them securely.

  2. Flour the turkey.

Boil

  1. Place the floured turkey in cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a gentle boil, skimming off any scum.

  3. Cover the kettle and boil for about 30 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and let the turkey sit covered for another 30 minutes.

Make the stuffing and serve

  1. Make stuffing by mixing grated bread, lemon peel, chopped oysters, eggs, and cream.

  2. Fill the turkey's cavity with stuffing and form the rest into balls.

  3. Boil the stuffing balls.

  4. Arrange them around 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. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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
Is the main cooked meat, poached gently in water so it stays moist and tender.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so the bread and cream hold together when boiled.
Grated bread
Forms the body of the stuffing and soaks up moisture and flavour.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Flour
Coats the turkey, helping the skin set and giving a light crust.

The step that matters

Bringing the water to a gentle boil and skimming. A vigorous boil can toughen the meat and break the skin, while skimming removes scum that would cloud the broth and spoil the flavour.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, oyster, egg, cream, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, oyster, egg, cream, flour. 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.

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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipes