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Turkey a LA Flamande Or, Dinde Poudree

A salt‑cured, sausage‑stuffed turkey served cold with a lemon‑mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 Poudree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Prepare the turkey by wiping it with a dry cloth; do not wash it.

  2. Sprinkle a little salt inside to draw out the blood and let it sit for a couple of hours.

  3. Drain and wipe the turkey again, then rub the outside with ½ cup coarse sea salt mixed with 1 tablespoon pounded sugar.

  4. Turn the turkey every day for four days.

Stuff and cook

  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, roll it in a cloth, and tie it at both ends.

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

Coat and serve

  1. Once cooked, coat it thickly with fine bread crumbs mixed with chopped parsley.

  2. Serve cold with a sauce made from lemon juice, lemon rind, mustard, pounded sugar, oil, and salt, 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, with its meat becoming tender during gentle boiling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and blood from the bird and seasons the outside during the curing days.
Sausage meat and bread crumbs
Form a moist, savoury stuffing that keeps the inside of the bird juicy as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cold sauce and balances its richness from the oil.
Prepared mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour to the cold sauce that cuts through the oil.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp-textured coating over the cooked bird and absorb the parsley's aroma.

The step that matters

Boiling the turkey gently. Boiling at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil keeps the meat tender and prevents the skin and stuffing from breaking apart during the long cooking time.

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.

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