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Boiled Turkey with Oyster Sauce

A boiled turkey stuffed with bread, celery, pork or butter, and oysters, served with a sauce made from oyster liquor, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey with Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Clean and singe the turkey carefully.

  2. Cut off the head, neck, and first joint of the legs.

  3. Stuff the turkey with a mixture of bread, chopped celery, pork or butter, salt, pepper, and raw oysters.

  4. Truss the turkey to make it look round and plump.

  5. Sew it tightly in a strong cloth.

Boil and garnish

  1. Cover the turkey with boiling water and simmer gently for 2 hours, skimming thoroughly.

  2. Once done, remove the turkey from the cloth and garnish with green celery tops.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Drain the liquor from the oysters into a stew-pan and scald them without boiling.

  2. Remove the oysters and mix flour with milk, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the liquor and bring to a boil.

  4. Then, add the oysters and serve.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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, cooked gently in boiling water until tender.
Oysters
Add a briny, savory flavor to the stuffing and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquor into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Milk
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its flavor.
Bread
Absorbs juices in the stuffing, keeping it moist and soft.

The step that matters

Scalding the oysters without boiling. Boiling toughens oyster flesh and makes it shrink and turn rubbery, so the oysters should only be heated until their edges curl.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, pork, pepper, oyster, flour, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, pork, pepper, oyster, flour, milk. 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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