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To Boil a Turkey

A whole turkey is stuffed with bread, butter, salt, pepper, and parsley, then boiled and rested.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the turkey with bread, butter, salt, pepper, and minced parsley.

  2. Tie the legs and wings as for roasting.

  3. Sprinkle a cloth with flour and wrap it around the turkey.

Boil and rest

  1. Boil the turkey for 40 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let it stand with the lid on for 30 minutes before serving.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Turkey
Is the main protein, cooked gently by simmering so it becomes tender and moist.
Bread
Fills the cavity, adding soft body and absorbing juices as the bird cooks.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and keeps the stuffing and meat moist.

The step that matters

Boil the turkey for 40 minutes. Water boils at a fixed temperature, so the cook must hold a steady simmer rather than a hard rolling boil. Vigorous boiling can toughen the meat and break up the wrapped cloth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Sagefits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

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