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Turkey Galantine, or Boned Turkey

A cold turkey galantine made with seasoned turkey breast, force‑meat, bacon, truffles, pickled tongue, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Turkey Galantine, or Boned Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Choose a fat hen turkey and leave the crop skin whole while dressing it. Cut off the legs, wings, and neck.

  2. Slit the skin at the back and carefully remove it. Cut the breasts into elongated pieces, about 1/4 inch square and 1 inch long.

  3. Season the turkey breast pieces with pepper, salt, nutmeg, mace, ground cloves, sweet basil, and chopped parsley.

Make the force-meat

  1. Make a force-meat by mixing 1 pound and 1/4 pound of lean veal or fresh pork with the remaining turkey meat, chopped well.

  2. Chop an equal volume of fresh bacon and mix it with the other chopped meat. Season with the same condiments.

  3. Pound the mixture in a mortar to a paste. Dice the truffles, pickled tongue, and cooked bacon into 3/4 inch pieces and season.

Assemble and cook

  1. Spread the turkey skin on a board and layer half of the force-meat, half of the turkey breasts, and half of the diced tongue, truffles, and bacon.

  2. Add turkey fillets and remaining diced ingredients, saving some force-meat for the last layer.

  3. Roll the turkey skin over the filling to form a round, long shape. Sew up the skin and wrap it tightly in a napkin.

  4. Tie the ends and across in two places to maintain an oval shape. Boil gently for 4 hours in boiling water or stock with turkey bones.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Basil + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh bacon
Adds fat and moisture so the force-meat stays juicy and tender during long cooking.
Veal or fresh pork
Lean meat that binds with the turkey and gives the force-meat a smooth, cohesive texture.
Truffles
Contributes a distinctive earthy aroma to the filling.
Pickled tongue
Adds savoury flavour and a firm, sliceable texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 4 hours. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil cooks the meat evenly and keeps the galantine tender and intact, instead of toughening the proteins and breaking the roll apart.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, pepper, nutmeg, clove, basil, parsley, veal):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pepper, nutmeg, clove, basil, parsley, veal. 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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