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Boiled Stuffed Turkey

A young turkey stuffed with veal forcemeat, boiled with carrot, onion, celery, and salted ox tongue, served with sauce from the broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 Stuffed Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Singe, draw, and wash the turkey.

  2. Stuff the turkey with veal forcemeat.

  3. Truss the legs into the body.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the turkey with carrot, onion, celery, and salted ox tongue until tender.

  2. Serve with slices of tongue on the bird, stuffing underneath, and sauce made from the boiling liquid poured around.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  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 is cooked tender by slow boiling.
Veal forcemeat
Fills the bird, adding moisture and a rich, savoury texture as it cooks.
Salted ox tongue
Flavours the boiling liquid and is served sliced on top of the bird.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when cooked and sliced.

The step that matters

Boil the turkey until tender. Boiling must be gentle and long enough for the bird to become fully tender without falling apart. Too hard a boil toughens the proteins and breaks up the meat, so the turkey is cooked through without losing its shape.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, carrot, celery, veal, egg, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, carrot, celery, veal, egg, pepper, butter. 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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