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Filling for Boned Chicken or Turkey

A savory filling for boned chicken or turkey made with veal or pork, eggs, spices, herbs, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Filling for Boned Chicken or Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. In a pot, combine bones with cold water, sweet herbs, onion, carrot, and turnip. Boil and skim carefully.

Stuff and tie the fowl

  1. Prepare the fowl by laying it flat. Spread a layer of force‑meat, then add strips of fat pork, liver, and mushrooms.

  2. Run a string around the edges of the chicken and draw it up like a wallet. Sew up the ends and the cut down the back.

  3. Roll the fowl tightly in a towel, tie the ends, and secure with 2 or 3 tight tapes around the middle.

Cook and press

  1. Boil in the prepared broth, adding enough water to cover. Allow 1 hour per pound.

  2. Remove from the towel, wipe off, wrap in a clean towel, and place on a platter. Cover with another towel and place a weight on top.

  3. Use the remaining broth for soup.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or lean fresh pork
Forms the force-meat that gives the stuffing its body and holds it together.
Whole egg
Binds the chopped meat so the force-meat sets firm when cooked.
Fat pork
Adds fat and moisture that keeps the lean meats from drying out.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Roll the fowl tightly in a towel and tie it firmly. Tight rolling and tapes hold the stuffing in place and shape the bird, so the filling stays compact and sliced neatly rather than spilling or loosening during the long simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, pork):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, pork. 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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