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To Bone a Turkey

A turkey is bony removed, stuffed, baked, and served with a sauce of giblets, egg yolks, wine, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Guava and parsley share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Bone a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the turkey

  1. Use a sharp thin knife to carefully remove the flesh from the wing bone, scraping downward without cutting it into pieces.

  2. Loosen the flesh from the breastbone, back, and thighs.

  3. Draw the skeleton out by the neck, like removing a glove.

  4. Stuff the turkey with your preferred stuffing and restore its shape.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake the turkey at 350°F (175°C) for two hours.

  2. Stew the giblets in ½ pint of water until done, then chop finely.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the giblet water with ⅓ cup of wine.

  4. Pour the mixture over the giblets in a serving dish.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with sprigs of parsley dipped in hot water and arrange jelly around the dish.

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. Guava + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8 recipes

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

  2. Wine + guavatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Turkey + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together532 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Wine + parsleytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the giblet sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Guava or currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balances the rich turkey and giblet flavours.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the giblet sauce, deepening its flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the giblet water. Egg yolks thicken only gently. If the liquid is too hot when they are added, they can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth sauce, so add them slowly and keep the heat low.

Swap the guava

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, egg, wine, parsley):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Guavathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, egg, wine, parsley. 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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