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To Boil a Turkey

A boiled turkey prepared with rice, salt, and a filling of bread, butter, pepper, oysters, and lemon slices.

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

To Boil a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the turkey well and soak it in saltwater for a few minutes.

  2. Place the turkey in a pot with cold water and add the rice.

Boil

  1. Skim the surface and let it boil slowly until cooked, about 2 hours for a large turkey.

Filling and wrapping

  1. Prepare a filling with bread, butter, pepper, salt, whole oysters, and lemon slices.

  2. For best results, wrap the turkey in a cloth before boiling.

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

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

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main protein, which firms and sets as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling.
Bread
Gives the filling body and soaks up its juices.
Whole oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour to the filling.
Lemon slices
Add acidity and fresh aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil slowly and skim the surface. A gentle simmer cooks the meat evenly and keeps it tender, while a hard boil toughens the proteins and breaks the meat apart. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the liquid.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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