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Turkey, Boiled

A boiled turkey served with a sauce made from boiled eggs, flour, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Turkey, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Boil the turkey hen in enough water to cover it for about 2 hours.

  2. Tie the wings to the sides of the turkey.

  3. Occasionally turn the turkey as the water boils down.

  4. Season the turkey with salt.

Make the egg sauce

  1. About 10-15 minutes before the turkey is done, chop the hard-boiled eggs finely.

  2. In a skillet, combine the chopped eggs with 1 pint of cold water and heat.

  3. Stir in ½ cup of flour before placing the skillet on the fire.

  4. Skim off any oily particles from the boiling turkey and add them to the egg sauce.

  5. Just before removing the sauce from heat, stir in a large slice of butter.

Serve

  1. Dress the turkey with the egg sauce and serve.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey hen
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through by long gentle boiling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Chopped into the sauce to thicken it and give it a rich, creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the egg sauce so it clings to the turkey rather than running off.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour before heating the skillet. Flour mixed into liquid without being kept moving can clump into lumps. Stirring it in evenly before heat is applied lets the starch disperse and thicken the sauce smoothly.

“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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