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Boiled Turkey

A whole turkey boiled with suet, oysters, eggs, cream, bread, lemon peel, and salt, served with celery or white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 the turkey and cut at the rump.

  2. Cut off the legs and tuck the ends of the thighs into the body, tying them fast.

  3. Flour the turkey and place it in cold water.

Boil

  1. Bring to a gentle boil, skimming off the scum, and cover the kettle.

  2. Boil for about 30 minutes more.

Stuff and serve

  1. Make stuffing with grated bread, lemon peel, suet, chopped oysters, eggs, and cream.

  2. Fill the turkey's cavity with stuffing and form the rest into balls to boil and serve around the dish.

  3. Serve with celery sauce or white sauce.

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. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 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 meat that is cooked whole by boiling.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing as it melts.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing together so it holds its shape when boiled.
Grated bread
Gives the stuffing body and absorbs the fat and liquid around it.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Bring to a gentle boil, skimming off the scum. Boiling too hard toughens the meat and breaks up the stuffing balls, while skimming removes impurities that cloud the broth. A gentle simmer keeps the turkey tender and the liquid clear.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

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

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