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Turkey in Jelly, or with Gravy

A stuffed turkey stewed with sausage, truffles, and herbs, served hot with sauce or chilled in jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turkey in Jelly, or with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and stew

  1. Stuff the boned turkey with sausage meat and truffles.

  2. Place the turkey in a stewpan and cover with slices of fat bacon.

  3. Add carrot, onion, cloves, sweet herbs, and mace.

  4. Moisten with good stock and let it stew until cooked through.

Brown and serve hot

  1. Remove the bacon and place the turkey in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes to brown.

  2. Serve hot with reduced sauce and forcemeat balls or stewed Portugal onions.

Serve cold in jelly

  1. For a cold dish, place cooled turkey in a stiff jelly in an oval mold.

  2. Use skewers to keep the turkey elevated for even jelly thickness.

  3. Carefully turn out the jelly and garnish with green curled parsley.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Boned turkey
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the stuffing and flavour during stewing.
Sausage meat
Adds richness and fat that keeps the stuffing moist as it cooks.
Truffles
Contributes a strong, earthy aroma to the stuffing.
Fat bacon
Bastes the turkey with fat during stewing, adding moisture and savoury flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stewing liquid.
Isinglass
Sets the stock into a firm jelly for the cold version.

The step that matters

Stewing until cooked through. Stewing gently in moist liquid keeps the lean turkey tender; boiling hard toughens the meat and dries the stuffing, so the heat must stay low and steady.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, truffle, carrot, onion, clove, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, truffle, carrot, onion, clove, white wine. 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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