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Boiled Turkey and Oyster Sauce

A boiled turkey stuffed with oysters, bread crumbs, butter, and seasonings, served with the broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey and Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Chop the oysters and mix with bread crumbs, butter, pepper, and salt.

Stuff and boil

  1. Stuff the turkey with the oyster mixture and sew it up in a thin cloth, dredged with flour inside.

  2. Boil the turkey slowly, allowing 15 minutes per pound, starting with lukewarm water.

  3. Salt the water and save the broth for 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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + wheattop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main savory, briny flavour of the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the oyster mixture so it holds together in the bird.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the stuffing moist and flavourful.
Wheat flour
Dusts the cloth so the wrapped turkey releases cleanly and a thin skin can form.

The step that matters

Boil the turkey slowly, starting with lukewarm water. Heating the bird gradually and simmering rather than boiling hard helps the meat cook evenly and stay tender, while the stuffing reaches a safe temperature at the centre.

“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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