Name: Boiled Turkey
Ingredients: 1 turkey; ½ cup coarse sea salt; 1 cup bread crumbs; ½ cup suet; 2 tablespoons parsley, chopped; 1 teaspoon lemon peel, chopped

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Soak the turkey in salt and water for 1.5 hours to make it white.
Prepare the stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, suet, parsley, and lemon peel.
Scald the parsley to keep it green.
Stuff the mixture into the turkey's breast.
Tie the turkey lightly in cloth.

Boil and serve

Boil the turkey.
Boil a young turkey for 2 hours; older turkeys will take longer.
Garnish with parsley and lemon slices before serving.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together822 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Turkey + parsleytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together532 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,445 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey: Provides the main meat, which the long gentle boil cooks through and makes tender.
Suet: Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping the crumbs moist and rich during boiling.
Bread crumbs: Soak up fat and moisture in the stuffing, giving it a soft, cohesive texture.
Coarse sea salt: Seasons the turkey during the soak and helps draw in flavor before cooking.

“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.