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How to Bone a Chicken or Turkey

A boned chicken or turkey filled with bread, butter, giblets, and dark meat, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

How to Bone a Chicken or Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the bird

  1. Use a sharp knife to slit the skin of the fowl down the back from neck to oil bag.

  2. Cut and scrape the meat and skin close to the bones.

  3. Joint the thigh, leg, and wing bones, cutting off the last joint of the wing carefully.

  4. Remove the skeleton and entrails, saving all giblets.

Fill and sew

  1. Make a filling with minced bread, butter, giblets, and dark meat.

  2. Fill the cavity where bones were removed and sew the skin down the back.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done, basting with salt, water, and butter.

  2. Remove threads when hot, handle carefully, and serve hot or cold.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or turkey
Provides the meat and skin that are shaped around the filling and cooked as one piece.
Bread
Forms the body of the filling and soaks up fat and juices during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist and helps the skin brown.
Giblets
Add rich, savory flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Cut and scrape the meat and skin close to the bones. The skin must stay intact to hold the filling inside the cavity during baking. Tears let the filling leak and dry out, so cut carefully and keep the skin whole.

“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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