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To Boil a Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with bread, parsley, lemon peel, oysters or onion, salt, pepper, nutmeg, egg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Boil a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the turkey as you would for roasting.

  2. Make a stuffing with bread, parsley, lemon peel, oysters or onion, salt, pepper, nutmeg, egg, and butter.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the turkey's crop and fasten the skin.

Boil

  1. Place the turkey in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Add 3 teaspoons of salt to the water and dredge the turkey with flour before boiling.

  3. Bring the water to a boil slowly, skimming off any scum.

  4. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer and cover closely.

  5. Cook for about 2 hours for a small turkey, longer for a larger one.

Finish

  1. Chop the neck and liver and add them to the gravy.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through by gentle simmering.
Bread
Soaks up moisture and gives the stuffing a soft, binding crumb.
Egg
Binds the stuffing together so it holds its shape when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, carrying flavour and softness.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic oils that brighten the flavour of the stuffing.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps thicken the cooking liquid for the gravy.

The step that matters

Bring the water to a boil slowly, skimming off any scum. Starting slowly and skimming removes impurities that would cloud the broth and keeps the meat tender rather than tough from rapid agitation.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, parsley, lemon, oyster, pepper, egg. 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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