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To Boil Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with a bread, herb, and meat mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Boil Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Make a stuffing by mixing bread, herbs, beef suet, ham, lemon peel, anchovy, butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and egg.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the turkey's crop.

  3. Tie the crop closed.

Boil and steam

  1. Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth.

  2. Place the wrapped turkey in cold water.

  3. Skim the water often.

  4. Cover the pot.

  5. Boil a young turkey of moderate size for 30 minutes.

  6. Remove the turkey from heat.

  7. Let the turkey steam to finish cooking.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Turkey + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together248 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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 in water until tender.
Bread
Absorbs moisture and binds with the egg to give the stuffing body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during cooking.
Egg
Sets when cooked, binding the stuffing together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Skim the water often. Fat and foam rise to the surface of simmering water and can cloud the broth and make it greasy. Regular skimming keeps the cooking liquid clear and the turkey tasting clean.

“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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