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Turkey, Boiled

A boiled turkey stuffed with sausage meat, served with forcemeat balls, celery, and a seasoned stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Turkey, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Prepare and truss the turkey for boiling.

  2. Stuff the crop with sausage meat.

  3. Wrap the bird in well-buttered paper.

  4. Place it in a pan with boiling stock or water to cover it.

  5. When the liquid boils, add the onions, carrots, turnip, bouquet-garni, peppercorns, and salt.

  6. Cover and cook gently for 1 to 2 hours, depending on the size of the turkey.

Make the garnish

  1. Meanwhile, make the forcemeat balls.

  2. Fry the forcemeat balls in a little hot fat or butter.

  3. Cut the celery into neat pieces.

  4. Boil the celery in well-seasoned stock or water until tender.

Serve

  1. Remove the trussing skewers and strings.

  2. Place the turkey on a hot dish.

  3. Pour the sauce over the turkey.

  4. Garnish with celery and forcemeat balls.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main body of meat that is gently cooked in the liquid.
Sausage meat
Stuffs the crop and adds richness and moisture to the bird as it cooks.
Celery sauce
Coats the turkey, adding moisture and a savoury, aromatic flavour.
Forcemeat balls
Add savoury richness and a contrasting crisp, browned texture as garnish.

The step that matters

Cooking the turkey gently. Simmering gently rather than boiling hard keeps the meat tender and prevents it from toughening and drying out as the proteins tighten.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, celery, sauce, carrot, turnip, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, celery, sauce, carrot, turnip, 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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