Skip to main content
Main

Boned Jellied Turkey

A preserved turkey stuffed with meat and set in a gelatinous stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boned Jellied Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Wash the turkey thoroughly in salt water and place it on a cutting board.

  2. Use a sharp knife to carefully remove the bones, disjointing the legs and cutting off the wings if desired.

  3. Remove the carcass and sew up the openings, leaving the neck open.

  4. In a bowl, mix the tongue, pork, veal, and fowl with salt, white pepper, and cayenne.

  5. Stuff the turkey with the meat mixture, shaping the legs and tying them together.

  6. Turn the neck skin back and sew it tightly.

  7. Wrap the turkey in unbleached cotton cloth and tie the ends.

Cook and set

  1. In a large pot, bring water to a near boil, place a dish at the bottom, and add the turkey.

  2. Boil steadily for 2.5 hours, then place on a dish with the cloth and weigh it down with two flat irons overnight until cold.

  3. Remove the cloth, fat, and threads.

Make the jelly

  1. To make the jelly, dissolve gelatine in cold water, then add boiling water, seasoning with salt, pepper, and cayenne, and add lemon juice or vinegar.

  2. Divide the jelly into three portions for coloring: leave one plain, color one with Worcestershire sauce or caramel, and the last with beet-root or cochineal.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Turkey + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the whole shell that holds the meat and gives the dish its main body.
Pork
Adds fat and richness, which keeps the stuffing moist as it cooks.
Veal
Adds meaty body and savoriness to the stuffing filling.
Tongue
Contributes rich, tender meat texture to the stuffing mixture.
Gelatine
Sets the cooking liquid into a firm jelly once it is chilled.

The step that matters

Cooking the turkey at a steady boil. Gelatine and collagen from the meat and bones only set into a clear, firm jelly when the liquid is held at a steady simmer, not a rolling boil. Too hard a boil can make the meat tough and cloud the jelly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, pork, veal, pepper, lemon):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pork, veal, pepper, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipes