Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Turkey

A whole turkey cooked in a pot with salt, vegetables, herbs, and spices, served with a thick white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Push the legs up.

  2. Cut a slit in each side.

  3. Draw the legs into the body.

  4. Stuff the inside with oyster forcemeat or chestnuts.

  5. Bind the turkey into shape with tape.

  6. Dust the turkey with flour.

Boil

  1. Place the turkey in an oval pot.

  2. Cover the pot with warm water.

  3. Add salt, carrot, onion, cloves, peppercorns, celery, and herbs.

  4. Bring the water to a boil.

  5. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  6. Skim off any scum that rises.

  7. Drain the turkey briefly.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Make a thick white sauce or béchamel using some of the boiling water.

  2. Pour the sauce over the turkey.

  3. Serve with oyster sauce, celery sauce, Hollandaise, or parsley sauce.

  4. Garnish with forcemeat balls, crispy bacon rolls, or lemon and parsley.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 provides the meat that is cooked gently in the water.
Flour
Dusted on the bird, it helps form a light coating that can thicken the surrounding liquid.
White sauce or béchamel
Adds creamy richness and moisture, coating the cooked turkey with a smooth, mild sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours. Boiling hard rather than simmering can toughen muscle fibres and break the bird's skin, so the water should only barely tremble.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, carrot, clove, celery, flour, sauce):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, carrot, clove, celery, flour, sauce. 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.

More boiled turkey recipes

with Oyster Sauce 11Eggs 4with Celery Sauce 4with Oyster Stuffing 4Celery Sauce for 3 See all 186 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipes