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Boned or Pressed Turkey

A jellied turkey made with veal stock, gelatin, lemon juice, currant jelly, and chopped poultry, layered with hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boned or Pressed Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a pot, combine veal, ham, shallot, thyme, parsley, celery, carrot, peppercorns, salt, and cold water.

  2. Boil gently until the liquid reduces to 1 pint, then strain without squeezing and let it cool overnight.

  3. Scrape off any fat from the cooled jelly.

Prepare the jelly

  1. Soak gelatine in 1 pint of cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in nearly 1 quart of boiling water, then stir in lemon juice and currant jelly.

  3. Combine the jellied stock with the gelatine mixture and strain through a flannel bag.

Assemble and set

  1. Prepare Charlotte Russe pans by dipping them in cold water without wiping.

  2. Pour a thin layer of jelly into the pans, then arrange the whites of hard-boiled eggs in decorative shapes.

  3. Add more jelly, followed by a layer of chopped meat, and repeat until all meat is used, finishing with a layer of jelly.

  4. Set in a cool place to firm up, then turn out onto a flat dish and garnish with parsley or lettuce.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Gives the stock its body and rich meaty flavour as it simmers.
Gelatine
Sets the strained stock into a firm jelly that holds the layers together.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide white shapes and a mild, firm texture in the set jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the clear jelly.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity note that balances the savoury stock.

The step that matters

Straining the stock without squeezing. Squeezing the solids pushes cloudy particles and fat into the liquid, which makes the jelly murky and greasy. Straining gently keeps it clear and bright.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, thyme, parsley, celery, carrot, lemon):

  1. Parsnipfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, thyme, parsley, celery, carrot, lemon. 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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