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Boiled Turkey

A boiled turkey served with optional stuffing and various sauces and sides.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bird

  1. Prepare the turkey by twisting the wings over against the back.

  2. Soak wheat bread or mashed potatoes in boiling water or milk.

  3. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and optional sage, thyme, or parsley.

  4. Fill the turkey's crop with the stuffing and secure the neck skin with a skewer.

  5. Dredge the outside of the turkey with flour.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the turkey in a cloth and place it in a pot of hot (not boiling) water.

  2. Cover the pot and let it boil gently for about 15 minutes per pound.

  3. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

  4. Serve the turkey with drawn butter, celery, or parsley sauce, along with your choice of sides.

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. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Is the main protein; long gentle simmering makes the meat tender and moist.
Wheat bread or mashed potatoes
Soaked and seasoned to form the stuffing, adding moisture and body inside the bird.
Flour
Dredged on the outside of the turkey, where it helps form a light coating around the skin.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the stuffing and carries flavor through the bread or potato mixture.

The step that matters

Keep the water hot but not boiling. A vigorous boil toughens meat proteins and can break the skin, while a gentle simmer cooks the turkey evenly and keeps it tender.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, milk, wheat, pepper, parsley, flour, butter):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, milk, wheat, pepper, parsley, flour, 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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