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Boiling Poultry

A boiled turkey stuffed with oyster and bread mixture, served with oyster sauce and garnished with barberries and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiling Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Pluck the turkey.

  2. Draw it at the rump.

  3. Cut off the legs.

  4. Tuck the ends into the body.

  5. Tie with string.

  6. Remove the head and neck.

Make the stuffing

  1. Grate the bread.

  2. Mix the grated bread with chopped oysters, lemon peel, salt, pepper, nutmeg, butter, eggs, and cream to make stuffing.

  3. Stuff the turkey with part of the mixture.

  4. Form the rest of the mixture into balls.

  5. Sew up the turkey.

  6. Dredge the turkey with flour.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the turkey in a kettle of cold water.

  2. Cover tightly.

  3. Bring the water to a boil.

  4. Skim off any foam.

  5. Reduce heat and let it simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Let it sit covered to finish cooking in the steam.

  8. Serve the turkey with oyster sauce poured over it and the stuffing balls arranged around it.

  9. Garnish with barberries and lemon.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  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 and is cooked gently by simmering in water.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing.
Bread
Provides the bulk of the stuffing and absorbs the other ingredients.
Oysters
Give the stuffing its distinctive briny flavor.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing and sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after the boil. Once the water reaches a boil, lowering the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the turkey and stuffing cooking evenly. A hard boil can toughen the meat and break apart the stuffing balls.

“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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