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To Boil a Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with bread, butter, cream, oysters, and egg yolks, served with drawn butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a stuffing by mixing chopped bread, butter, cream, oysters, and egg yolks.

  2. Stuff the turkey and sew it closed.

  3. Dredge the turkey with flour.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the turkey in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Add salt to the pot.

  3. Bring the pot to a simmer.

  4. Cook the turkey for 2.5 hours, skimming occasionally.

  5. Wrap the turkey in a cloth dredged with flour.

  6. Serve with drawn butter mixed with oysters.

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

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (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. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through by slow simmering in water.
Bread
Absorbs the butter, cream and egg yolks to form a soft, moist stuffing.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing together and add richness as they set during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and the drawn butter for serving.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing and the serving butter.

The step that matters

Simmering the turkey. Keep the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil. Vigorous boiling toughens the meat and can break the stuffing apart, while skimming removes foam that would cloud the broth.

“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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