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Boiled Turkey

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and bread work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 822 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the turkey in a kettle of water that is not cold.

  2. Cover the kettle and heat it on the stove; skim off any scum that rises.

  3. Simmer slowly for 30 minutes, then remove from heat and keep it covered in the hot water.

  4. If the turkey is medium-sized, the steam will finish cooking it in another 30 minutes, keeping the skin intact and tender.

  5. Reheat the turkey just before serving.

  6. Serve with oyster sauce on the side.

  7. Optionally, stuff the turkey's cavity with a mixture of bread crumbs, chopped oysters, a little mace, and salt moistened with the egg before cooking.

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 + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

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

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, oyster, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More boiled turkey recipes

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