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A Turkey in Jelly

A dish of boiled turkey served with a savory jelly made from veal stock, mace, nutmeg, white pepper, lemon peel, salt, and citrus juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Turkey in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Boil the turkey.

  2. Let the turkey cool.

  3. Skin the fowl.

  4. Remove the fat without cutting it into pieces.

Make the jelly

  1. Combine the veal and water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a simmer.

  3. Skim the surface.

  4. Do not let it boil.

  5. Add mace, nutmeg, white pepper, and lemon peel.

  6. Simmer for 6-7 hours.

  7. Check if the jelly is stiff by cooling a small amount.

  8. Skim off any fat without stirring the meat.

  9. Add salt and the juice of the orange or lemon 15 minutes before finishing.

  10. Strain the jelly through a sieve, avoiding the sediment at the bottom.

Serve

  1. Place the turkey in a serving dish.

  2. Pour the jelly over the turkey.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

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

  5. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Its collagen dissolves during long simmering and sets into the jelly when cooled.
Turkey
Provides the meat that is served in the jelly.
Fowl
Adds more meat and flavour to the stock that is served with the bird.

The step that matters

Keep the jelly at a gentle simmer. Boiling makes the liquid cloudy and can break up the gelatin network, so the jelly may not set clear and firm. Skimming while it simmers keeps the broth clear.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, veal, mace, nutmeg, corn, lemon, orange):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, veal, mace, nutmeg, corn, lemon, orange. 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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