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To Boil a Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with suet, bread crumbs, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, egg, and milk, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Clean the turkey by removing feathers and singeing hair with burning paper without blackening the skin.

  2. Clean the inside by drawing and wiping.

  3. Cut off the legs at the first joints and remove the sinews; pull down the skin and tuck the legs inside.

  4. Cut off the head close to the body, leaving the skin long, and remove the craw.

Stuff and truss

  1. Make stuffing with chopped suet, bread crumbs, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, egg, and milk.

  2. Stuff the turkey breast, leaving room for the stuffing to swell, then sew the skin over the opening.

  3. Place the liver in one wing and the gizzard in the other, securing the wings to the sides with a skewer.

Boil and serve

  1. Wrap the turkey in a cloth and boil in warm water, ensuring it is always covered.

  2. Boil a small young turkey for 1.5 hours and a larger one for 2.5 to 3 hours.

  3. When done, place in a hot dish, pour a little sauce over the breast, and serve the remainder in a sauce tureen.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by boiling in water.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and egg to give the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.

The step that matters

Keeping the turkey covered while boiling. If the turkey is not always submerged, the exposed parts overcook and dry out while the rest is still cooking. Keeping it covered in warm water cooks it evenly and keeps the meat moist.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, pepper, nutmeg, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, pepper, nutmeg, egg, milk. 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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