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Boiled Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with bread, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon peel, oysters, butter, suet, and egg, served with oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Make a stuffing with bread, coarse sea salt, black pepper, nutmeg, lemon peel, oysters, butter, suet, and 1 egg.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the turkey's crop and fasten the skin.

Boil and serve

  1. Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth and boil it until very white.

  2. Prepare oyster sauce by mixing butter, a little cream, and soy sauce.

  3. Serve the oyster sauce over the boiled turkey.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread
Provides the bulk of the stuffing and soaks up fat and moisture.
Flour
Forms a cloth coating around the turkey that helps shape it during boiling.
Butter
Enriches the stuffing and the sauce, adding fat and a smooth texture.
Cream
Makes the sauce richer and smoother, softening its flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the turkey until very white. Boiling gently keeps the meat moist and tender, while overcooking makes it tough and dry. The wrapping cloth holds the shape during 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.

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