Skip to main content
Main

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
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turkey and bread work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 822 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Turkey + breadtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,015 recipes

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

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.

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, pepper, lemon, oyster, butter, egg):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Sageabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, pepper, lemon, oyster, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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

Illustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Lemon SauceIllustrationLemon Sauce236 recipesIllustration of White BreadIllustrationWhite Bread80 recipesIllustration of Turkey SoupIllustrationTurkey Soup71 recipes