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Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with bread, herbs, spices, oysters or anchovy, butter, suet, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the head and neck from the turkey.

  2. Make a stuffing with bread, herbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon peel, oysters or anchovy, butter, suet, and egg.

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

Cook and serve

  1. Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth and boil it.

  2. Serve with oyster sauce made rich with cream or liver and lemon 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 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 through by boiling.
Bread
Absorbs the butter and suet to give the stuffing body and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the stuffing moist as it cooks.
Suet
Adds hard animal fat that gives the stuffing richness and a tender texture.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together inside the bird.

The step that matters

Fasten the skin after stuffing. If the stuffing is packed too loosely or the opening is not closed well, the filling can fall out or shift during boiling. Filling the cavity gently and closing it securely keeps the stuffing in place and helps it cook evenly.

“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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