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Boiled Turkey

A whole turkey boiled with salt, pepper, lemon juice, optionally stuffed, served with oyster or celery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the turkey and rub it with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Stuff with oyster or bread stuffing if desired; otherwise, leave it unstuffed.

  3. Crush the wings and legs close to the body and pin the turkey in a clean cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Add a little salt to the water and cook the turkey slowly, allowing 20 minutes for each pound.

  2. For a better flavor, consider steaming the turkey instead of boiling.

  3. Serve with oyster or celery 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turkey + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together464 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Is the main protein; slow cooking keeps its meat tender and moist.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the seasoned turkey.

The step that matters

Cook the turkey slowly. Slow cooking gives heat time to reach the thickest parts, such as the thigh and breast, without drying out or toughening the outer meat. Cooking time depends on weight, so the turkey should be fully cooked through before serving.

“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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