Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Boiled Turkey
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Draw and truss the turkey with the legs out for easy carving.
Clean the turkey well after singeing.
Stuff the turkey with the prepared mixture.
Make the stuffing
Prepare the stuffing by mixing stale bread crumbs, butter or marrow, parsley, oysters, and chopped ham if desired.
Boil and serve
Place the turkey in a large pot and cover it with clean water.
Heat the pot over a clear fire, but avoid a fierce flame.
Simmer the turkey for 2.5 hours for a large fowl, 2 hours for a smaller one, or 1 hour and 10 to 1 hour and 40 minutes for very small turkeys.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,536 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together822 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,184 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,545 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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, cooked through by gentle simmering in water.
- Stale bread crumbs
- Absorb butter and juices, giving the stuffing body and moisture.
- Butter or marrow
- Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and keeping the stuffing moist.
- Oysters
- Contribute a briny, savory flavor to the stuffing.
The step that matters
Keep the water at a gentle simmer. A fierce flame makes the water boil hard, which toughens meat proteins and can break the turkey apart. Gentle heat cooks it evenly and keeps it tender.
Swap the parsley
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, butter, oyster, ham):
- Thymefits about as well
- Sagefits about as well
- Parsleythe original
- Nutmegfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, butter, oyster, ham. 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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