Skip to main content
Main

Turkey a LA Flamande, Or, Diitde Poudree

A turkey stuffed with sausage and breadcrumbs, seasoned with salt, sugar, lemon, spices, boiled, and served cold with a lemon‑mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Turkey a LA Flamande, Or, Diitde Poudree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Wipe the inside of the turkey with a dry cloth; do not wash it.

  2. Sprinkle a little salt inside the turkey to draw out the blood.

  3. Let the turkey sit for a couple of hours.

  4. Drain the liquid and wipe the turkey again.

  5. Rub the outside of the turkey with ½ cup coarse sea salt mixed with 1 tablespoon pounded sugar.

  6. Turn the turkey every day for four days.

Stuff and boil

  1. Fill the turkey with equal parts sausage meat and bread crumbs soaked in boiling milk, seasoned with lemon rind, nutmeg, mace, cayenne, and fine herbs.

  2. Sew the turkey securely. Truss the turkey. Roll the turkey in a cloth. Tie the cloth at both ends.

  3. Boil gently for 3 to 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle the cooked turkey with fine bread crumbs mixed with chopped parsley.

  2. Serve the turkey cold with a sauce made from lemon juice, lemon rind, mustard, pounded sugar, oil, and salt, mixed until smooth.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  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; salting firms and seasons the meat through.
Sausage meat
Adds richness and fat to the stuffing, keeping the filling moist during boiling.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they bind the stuffing and keep it tender and moist.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat deeply during the curing period.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cold sauce and balances its richness.
Mustard
Adds sharpness to the sauce, balancing the oil and sugar.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3 to 4 hours. Boiling at a gentle simmer cooks the stuffed bird evenly and keeps the meat tender. A hard boil can toughen the proteins and break the cloth-wrapped shape.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, sugar, meat, bread, lemon, nutmeg, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, sugar, meat, bread, lemon, nutmeg, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipes