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Turkey a LA Flamande, Or, Dinde POUDrI E

A seasoned turkey stuffed with sausage and bread crumbs, slow‑cooked and served cold with a lemon‑mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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, Dinde POUDrI E

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Prepare the turkey by wiping it with a dry cloth; do not wash it.

  2. Sprinkle a little salt inside to draw out the blood; let it sit for a couple of hours, then drain and wipe again.

  3. Rub the outside of the turkey with the salt and sugar mixture, turning it daily for four days.

Stuff and cook

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

  2. Sew the turkey securely, truss it, and roll it in a cloth, tying it at both ends.

  3. Boil the turkey gently in water for 3 to 4 hours.

  4. Once cooked, sprinkle with fine bread crumbs mixed with chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with a sauce made from lemon juice, lemon rind, mustard, 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 and carries the stuffing and flavour throughout.
Sausage meat and bread crumbs
Soaked bread adds moisture and softness, while sausage meat adds richness to the filling.
Salt
Draws out moisture and blood and seasons the meat through the curing period.
Sugar
Balances the salt in the cure and adds a touch of sweetness.
Lemon juice and rind
Adds acidity and bright aroma that cut through the rich meat and sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness to the sauce that complements the rich, cold meat.

The step that matters

Boil the turkey gently. Gentle simmering cooks the bird through while keeping the meat tender and moist; a hard boil can toughen the muscle fibres and break the trussed shape.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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