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Steamed Turkey

A whole turkey steamed and served with butter, parsley, and boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,592 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Steamed Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the turkey as you would for roasting.

  2. If you don't have a steamer, place a gridiron over a pot of boiling water.

Steam

  1. Lay the turkey on the gridiron and cover with a deep pan, sealing the edges with wet cloths.

  2. Keep the water boiling hard, allowing 20 minutes of steaming for each pound of turkey.

  3. Replenish the water by removing one cloth to add more boiling water from a kettle.

  4. When the turkey is half done, lift the pan, turn the turkey, and replace the cloths to continue steaming.

Serve

  1. Once done, place the turkey on a hot dish and baste with melted butter and chopped parsley.

  2. Serve with drawn butter mixed with chopped boiled eggs.

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

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Parsley + eggtop 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

Turkey
Provides the main protein, which cooks through gently in the trapped steam.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour over the surface of the cooked turkey.
Boiled eggs
Add texture and body to the drawn butter sauce served alongside the turkey.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling hard. Steam only cooks the turkey while the water keeps producing steam. If the water drops to a simmer or runs low, cooking slows and the timing goes wrong, so replenish it with boiling water as directed.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, egg. 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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