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Steamed Turkey

A turkey steamed with celery stuffing and served with oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and celery work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 431 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Steamed Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the turkey as you would for baking, adding chopped celery to the stuffing.

  2. Make the stuffing quite dry, as steaming will make it more moist.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the turkey for about 2.5 hours.

  2. Serve with oyster sauce, made by thickening drawn butter and adding oysters.

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. Turkey + celerytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Celery + oystertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,131 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Turkey + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
The main protein, cooked gently through by steam and kept moist.
Chopped celery
Adds aromatic flavour and moisture to the stuffing.
Oyster sauce
Adds a savoury, salty flavour to the serving sauce.

The step that matters

Make the stuffing quite dry. Steam condenses on the food and adds moisture during cooking, so stuffing that starts dry will not turn soggy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, oyster, sauce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, oyster, sauce. 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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