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Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with bread, herbs, spices, oysters or anchovy, butter, suet, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Remove the head and neck from the turkey.

  2. Make a stuffing with bread, herbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon peel, oysters or anchovy, butter, suet, and egg.

Cook and serve

  1. Stuff the mixture into the turkey's crop and secure the skin.

  2. Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth and boil it.

  3. Serve with oyster sauce made rich with cream or liver and lemon sauce.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  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 whole by boiling.
Bread
Gives the stuffing body and soaks up the butter and egg.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, carrying flavour and moisture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and tender during cooking.
Oysters or anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Securing the stuffed turkey before boiling. If the skin is not closed firmly, the stuffing can leak out into the cooking liquid while the bird boils. Wrapping in a floured cloth also helps hold the shape during cooking.

“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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