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Boned Turkey

A boned turkey stuffed with veal, ham, truffles, mushrooms, celery, thyme, onion, and parsley, boiled and served with a gelatinous broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,193 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boned Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Split the turkey down the back and remove all the meat, leaving only the carcass.

  2. Chop the veal, ham, truffles, mushrooms, celery, thyme, onion, and parsley finely.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper and salt.

  4. Stuff the meat mixture back into the turkey.

  5. Sew the back of the turkey closed.

  6. Wrap the turkey in a bag.

  7. Boil the wrapped turkey gently for 2 to 3 hours, depending on size.

Make the jelly

  1. Place the carcass in 1 gallon of water.

  2. Boil the carcass until reduced to 3 pints.

  3. Add pepper, salt, and a small piece of onion to the broth.

  4. Strain the broth.

  5. Melt 1 box of gelatin in a cup of water. Mix the melted gelatin with the cool broth.

  6. Add the whites of 2 beaten eggs and 2 egg shells. Bring the mixture to a boil for 10 minutes.

  7. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

Assemble and serve

  1. Garnish a small mold with eggs, parsley, beets, and carrots, layering with jelly until filled.

  2. Press the turkey in a close pan.

  3. Cool the turkey.

  4. Cover the turkey with the cool jelly.

  5. Garnish the turkey with the prepared mold.

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. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, holding the stuffing while it cooks and sets.
Veal cutlet
Supplies lean meat that becomes a firm, moist filling when chopped and cooked.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the stuffing mixture.
Gelatin (in the method)
Sets the broth into a clear jelly that coats and holds the turkey.
Eggs (in the method)
Whites and shells clarify the broth, leaving it clear and fine-flavored.

The step that matters

Boil the wrapped turkey gently. A gentle simmer cooks the stuffed bird through evenly and keeps the meat tender and moist; a hard boil can toughen the meat and break up the filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, veal, ham, truffle, mushroom, celery, thyme):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, veal, ham, truffle, mushroom, celery, thyme. 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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