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Meat Jelly for Boned Turkey

A gelatinous spread made from turkey broth, eggs, and sherry, set with gelatine and flavored with turmeric and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,192 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Meat Jelly for Boned Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Remove the oil from the cooled turkey broth and strain it into a porcelain kettle.

  2. Add gelatine, eggs, and sherry or Madeira.

  3. Stir the mixture well.

  4. Incorporate 1 quart of strained broth.

  5. Beat rapidly with an egg beater.

  6. Heat over the fire and stir until it boils.

  7. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.

  8. Sprinkle with turmeric.

  9. Strain as you would other jelly.

  10. Add lemon juice to taste.

Serve

  1. Once cooled, break up the jelly.

  2. Place the jelly over and around the turkey.

  3. Cut into thick slices.

  4. Cut into fanciful shapes using a cookie cutter.

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. Turmeric + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Turkey + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  3. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Turkey + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together464 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Gelatine
Sets the strained broth into a firm jelly once cooled.
Eggs
Egg whites help clarify the broth as they coagulate and gather impurities during boiling.
Sherry or madeira
Adds aroma and flavour to the jelly.
Turkey broth
Provides the main liquid and savoury flavour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Heat over the fire and stir until it boils. Stirring keeps the egg and gelatine from settling and scorching on the base. Once the egg whites coagulate, simmering gently lets them trap impurities so the jelly strains clear rather than cloudy.

Swap the turmeric

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, egg, sherry, lemon. 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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