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To Boil a Turkey with Oyster Sauce

A boiled turkey stuffed with sweetbread, marrow, breadcrumbs, herbs, and eggs, finished with oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Boil a Turkey with Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Give the turkey no meat the day before killing it.

  2. On the day of killing, give it a spoonful of alegar to make it white and tender.

  3. Hang the turkey by the legs for 3-4 days.

  4. Pluck the turkey, remove the breast bone, and cut off the legs.

Stuff and boil

  1. Stuff the neck with boiled sweetbread, marrow, breadcrumbs, parsley, mace, nutmeg, lemon peel, and egg yolks and whites.

  2. If stuffing remains, form it into balls and boil in milk and water for 10 minutes.

  3. Wrap the turkey in a cloth, flour it, and place it in a kettle of cold water.

  4. Skim when it begins to rise and let it boil slowly for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour oyster sauce over the turkey when 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Turkey + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together281 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Is the main cooked protein, and its tender texture depends on the preparation before boiling.
Sweetbread
Adds a soft, rich texture to the stuffing.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing and add richness and structure as they set.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce.
Oysters
Provide the savoury, briny flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Skimming and slow boiling. Once the water begins to rise, it must be skimmed and kept at a gentle simmer. Vigorous boiling toughens proteins and can break the bird apart, while foam left on the surface clouds the cooking liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, parsley, nutmeg, lemon, egg, milk, oyster):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, parsley, nutmeg, lemon, egg, milk, oyster. 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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