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Boiled Turkey

A whole turkey boiled with veal stuffing, lemon, vegetables, and served with various sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Hang the turkey for 5 or 6 days if weather permits.

  2. Pluck, singe, and draw the turkey.

  3. Stuff the turkey with veal forcemeat.

  4. Truss the turkey for boiling, draw the legs into the body, and bind the turkey securely with tape.

  5. Rub the turkey, especially the breast, with slices of hard, acid lemon.

Boil the turkey

  1. Place the turkey in an oval pan with hot water or stock to cover it.

  2. Add salt, carrot, onion with cloves, peppercorns, celery, and parsley.

  3. Bring the liquid to a boil slowly and skim the liquid carefully.

  4. Let the turkey simmer gently until it is tender.

  5. Remove the turkey from the liquid and drain the turkey briefly.

Serve

  1. Serve the turkey on a hot dish with white sauce poured over it.

  2. Serve the turkey with parsley and butter, celery sauce, oyster sauce, Dutch sauce, and melted butter flavored with horseradish.

  3. Garnish the turkey with bacon and sliced tongue.

  4. Garnish the turkey with sliced lemon and parsley.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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; long gentle simmering makes the meat tender.
Veal forcemeat
Adds moisture and richness inside the bird as it cooks.
Lemon
Its acidity brightens the flavor of the rubbed meat and adds a fresh aroma.
Onion
Studded with cloves, it adds aroma to the simmering liquid.
White sauce
Adds creamy richness and moisture to the served turkey.

The step that matters

Bring the liquid to a boil slowly. Rapid boiling toughens meat and clouds the liquid; a slow rise to a gentle simmer keeps the turkey tender and the broth clear, and skimming removes impurities that rise to the surface.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, veal, lemon, carrot, clove, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, veal, lemon, carrot, clove, celery, 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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