Skip to main content
Main

Turkey a LA Flamande, Or, Dinde POUDrIe

A stuffed turkey roasted with sausage, breadcrumbs, and spices, served cold with a lemon‑mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turkey a LA Flamande, Or, Dinde POUDrIe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Wipe the turkey inside and out with a dry cloth; do not wash it.

  2. Sprinkle a little salt inside to draw out the blood; let it sit for a couple of hours, then drain and wipe again.

  3. Rub the outside of the turkey with ½ cup coarse sea salt mixed with 1 tablespoon pounded sugar; turn it every day for 4 days.

Stuff and boil

  1. Fill the turkey with equal parts sausage meat and bread crumbs soaked in boiling milk or cream, seasoned with lemon rind, nutmeg, mace, cayenne, and fine herbs.

  2. Sew the turkey securely, truss it, and roll it in a cloth, tying it at both ends.

  3. Boil the turkey gently in water for 3 to 4 hours.

  4. Once cooked, sprinkle with fine bread crumbs mixed with chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with a sauce made from lemon juice, lemon rind, mustard, pounded sugar, and oil, mixed until smooth.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  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; its lean meat is cooked gently by boiling to keep it tender.
Coarse sea salt
Cures the outside of the bird, drawing out moisture and seasoning the meat.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savory richness to the stuffing, keeping the filling moist during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk or cream to give the stuffing a soft, moist texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cold sauce and balances the richness of the meat.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the oil into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the turkey gently. Boiling at a gentle simmer cooks the stuffed bird through without toughening the meat, which can happen with a rolling boil. Keeping the bird wrapped and tied holds the stuffing in place as it cooks.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, sugar, meat, lemon, nutmeg, bread, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, sugar, meat, lemon, nutmeg, bread, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipes