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To Bone, and Cook a Boned Turkey

A whole turkey with its bones removed, stuffed, simmered with calves' feet and bones, then served cold with jellied gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Bone, and Cook a Boned Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Bone and stuff

  1. Using a small sharp knife, carefully cut the flesh from the bones of the turkey, keeping the skin intact.

  2. Remove the bones from the turkey, splitting the back halfway up.

  3. Prepare stuffing by mixing finely chopped chicken meat, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, mace, sweet marjoram, butter, and eggs.

  4. Fill the turkey with the stuffing and sew it up to maintain its shape.

Simmer the gravy

  1. In a deep saucepan, combine the cracked calves' feet, removed turkey bones, onion, carrot, mace, pepper, salt, and cloves.

  2. Place the turkey on top of the bones and add 2 quarts of water.

  3. Cover tightly and simmer for 3 hours.

  4. If there is less than 1 quart of gravy, add more water and boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Beat the egg whites and shells, stir into the gravy, and boil for 15 minutes.

  6. Strain the gravy through a cloth into a jelly mold.

Brown and serve

  1. Remove the turkey, flour it, baste with butter, and place it in a 400°F (200°C) oven to brown.

  2. Once the turkey is cold and the jelly is set, serve the turkey with jelly on the breast.

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. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the stuffing and help hold its mixture together during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the stuffing.
Calves' feet
Release gelatin into the liquid, helping the gravy set into a jelly.
Egg whites
Bind fine particles in the gravy so they can be strained off, clearing the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and aids browning of the turkey skin.

The step that matters

Strain the gravy through a cloth into a jelly mold.. Gelatin from the calves' feet sets the liquid into a jelly only as it cools, so the gravy must be strained clear and left undisturbed to chill before the turkey is served.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, onion, carrot, bread, pepper, marjoram, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, onion, carrot, bread, pepper, marjoram, butter. 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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