Skip to main content

Boiled Turkey

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the turkey by dressing it for boiling.

  2. Stuff the turkey with sausage meat or oyster forcemeat if desired.

  3. Serve with white, celery, mushroom, or oyster sauce, along with boiled ham, bacon, or pickled pork.

  4. Cut the turkey into neat joints.

  5. Simmer the trimmings with shallots and stock for 30 minutes or longer.

  6. Strain the gravy and set aside.

  7. Melt butter and mix with flour, then stir in the gravy and bring to a boil.

  8. Add wine, lemon juice, and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

  9. If the turkey is already cooked, warm it through in the sauce for 15 minutes.

  10. Optionally, add a squeeze of orange juice before serving.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, sauce, meat, ham, butter, flour, wine):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, sauce, meat, ham, butter, flour, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More boiled turkey recipes

with Oyster Sauce 11Eggs 4with Celery Sauce 4with Oyster Stuffing 4Celery Sauce for 3 See all 186 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes