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Boned Turkey

A boiled turkey meatloaf made by mixing cooked meat, seasoning, broth, and flour, then shaping and pressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Boned Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the turkey

  1. Boil the turkey in as little water as possible until the bones can be easily separated from the meat.

  2. Remove all the skin and slightly mix the light and dark meat.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Keep the boiling liquid warm and pour it over the meat, mixing well.

  5. For an improvement, blend flour and butter together and stir into the boiling water.

Shape and press

  1. Shape the mixture like a loaf of bread.

  2. Wrap it in a cloth or place it in an oval-shaped dish and press with a heavy weight for a few hours.

  3. Slice thinly.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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
Provides the main body of the loaf, and its meat holds the shape once pressed and chilled.
Flour
Thickens the boiling liquid, helping bind the meat with a more cohesive texture.
Butter
Adds fat to the thickened liquid, contributing richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the boiling water. Flour must be blended with butter first and stirred into hot liquid so it disperses evenly; added directly, it can clump into lumps instead of thickening 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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