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To Boil Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with a mixture of lemon peels, oysters or anchovy, butter, suet, egg, and flavored with oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters or use an anchovy.

  2. Mix the oysters or anchovy with lemon peels, butter, suet, and egg.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the turkey's crop and secure the skin.

Boil and sauce

  1. Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth and boil until very white.

  2. Prepare a rich oyster sauce with butter, cream, and soy, and pour it over the turkey.

Roast and serve

  1. For roasting, draw the sinews of the leg, twist the head under the wing, and avoid tearing the liver.

  2. Stuff with sausage meat or bread stuffing, ensuring even cooking.

  3. Cover the bone with a strip of paper to prevent scorching.

  4. Baste well and serve with gravy and plenty of bread sauce.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main body of meat that is boiled and then served.
Oysters
Add a savoury, briny flavour to the stuffing mixture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the stuffing mixture together so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the stuffing and the oyster sauce.
Cream
Makes the oyster sauce smooth and rich in texture.

The step that matters

Wrapping the turkey in a floured cloth before boiling. The flour coat forms a seal that helps hold the cloth in place and protects the skin, so the bird keeps its shape and colour while boiling. If the cloth is loose or unfloured, the skin can split or cook unevenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, oyster, butter, egg, flour, sauce, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, oyster, butter, egg, flour, sauce, cream. 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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