Skip to main content
Main

To Boil a Turkey with Oyster Sauce

A boiled turkey stuffed with a forcemeat of bread, oysters, and seasonings, served with oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil a Turkey with Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Mix the grated bread, chopped oysters, nutmeg, pepper, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add the butter, cream, and eggs to form a light forcemeat.

  3. Stuff the turkey's craw with the forcemeat.

  4. Shape the remaining forcemeat into balls.

  5. Boil the balls in water until cooked.

  6. Sew up the turkey.

  7. Dredge the turkey with flour.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the turkey in a kettle of cold water.

  2. Cover and bring the water to a boil.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises.

  4. Reduce heat and let the turkey boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  5. Remove the turkey from heat.

  6. Let the turkey sit in the hot water for another 30 minutes.

  7. Serve the turkey with oyster sauce poured over it and the balls arranged around it.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together when stuffed and boiled.
Grated bread
Provides bulk and soaks up moisture, giving the forcemeat a light, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender forcemeat.
Chopped oysters
Contribute savory, briny flavor to the forcemeat and the dish.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the forcemeat light and soft.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and let the turkey boil slowly. Water held at a gentle simmer cooks the bird through without toughening the meat or breaking it apart. A hard, rolling boil can make the meat dry and tough and can split the stuffing out of the craw.

“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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes