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Boiled Turkey

A boiled turkey served with an allemande sauce and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 the turkey

  1. Singe the turkey.

  2. Remove the oil bag.

  3. Draw the turkey as for roasting without stuffing.

  4. Place the turkey breast down in a soup kettle.

Boil the turkey

  1. Cover the turkey with boiling water.

  2. Boil slowly for 1.5 to 2 hours, skimming off fat as needed until tender.

Make the Allemande sauce

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan for the Allemande sauce.

  2. Whisk in 3 tablespoons of flour to thicken the sauce.

  3. Moisten the sauce with 1 pint of turkey broth.

  4. Add the yolks of 3 eggs to the sauce, tempering them with a little hot liquid first.

  5. Do not let the sauce boil after adding the eggs.

  6. Stir in ½ lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of butter, salt, and pepper into the sauce.

Add the oysters

  1. In a separate saucepan, cook the oysters with their liquid and 1 tablespoon of butter for 3 minutes after simmering.

  2. Remove half the liquid from the oysters.

  3. Add the oysters to the Allemande sauce, mixing gently without boiling.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Provides the main body of meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and sets in the hot liquid.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form the base of the sauce.
Turkey broth
Supplies the liquid that moistens and flavors the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its flavor.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil after adding the eggs. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the sauce boils after they are added, the proteins overcook and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy and thin.

“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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