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Boiled Turkey with Oyster Sauce

A boiled turkey served with a sauce made from oysters, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and turkey stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey with Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the turkey

  1. Dress, clean, and truss the turkey.

  2. Put the turkey into a large kettle and half cover it with boiling water.

  3. Do not add salt until half done.

  4. Cook until tender.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Wash the oysters and reserve the liquor.

  2. Heat and strain the oyster liquor.

  3. Cook the oysters in the liquor until plump.

  4. Remove the oysters.

  5. Thicken the liquor with butter and flour.

  6. Add salt, pepper, and 1 cup of the turkey boiling water to the sauce.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

  4. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Is the main dish, cooked slowly in boiling water until tender.
Oysters
Provide the briny, savoury flavour that defines the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the oyster liquor into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the liquor with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and hot liquor, or the sauce will taste raw and may form lumps. Stirring as it heats lets the starch swell evenly and thicken smoothly.

“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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