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Turkey a LA Flamande, Or, Dinde Poudrie

A boiled turkey stuffed with sausage and bread crumbs, seasoned with lemon, spices, and herbs, served cold with a lemon-mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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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 with a dry cloth, and do not wash the turkey.

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

  3. Rub the outside of the turkey with ½ cup coarse sea salt mixed with 1 tablespoon pounded sugar.

  4. Turn the turkey every day for 4 days.

Stuff and tie

  1. Fill the turkey with equal parts sausage meat and soaked bread crumbs.

  2. Season the filling with lemon rind, nutmeg, mace, cayenne, and fine herbs.

  3. Sew the turkey securely, roll it in a cloth, and tie the turkey at both ends.

Cook and serve

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

  2. Sprinkle the cooked turkey with fine bread crumbs mixed with chopped parsley.

  3. Serve the turkey cold with a sauce made from lemon juice, lemon rind, mustard, pounded sugar, and enough oil to balance the acidity, and mix the sauce well.

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, and its meat is cooked gently until tender.
Sausage meat
Adds richness and fat to the filling, keeping the stuffing moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk or cream, they absorb liquid and keep the filling moist and tender.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity to the sauce, brightening the rich turkey meat.
Oil
Balances the acidity of the lemon sauce and gives it a smooth, rich body.

The step that matters

Boil the turkey gently in water for 3 to 4 hours. Boiling too hard can toughen the meat and break the bird apart, so keep the water at a gentle simmer for even, tender cooking.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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