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Turkey a LA Flamande, Or, Dinde POUDr£e

A boiled turkey stuffed with sausage, bread crumbs, and spices, then coated with parsley crumbs and served with a lemon mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 POUDr£e

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

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

  2. Sprinkle a little salt inside to draw out the blood. Let it sit for 2 hours.

  3. Drain and wipe again.

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

  5. Turn it daily for 4 days.

Make and stuff

  1. Mix ½ cup sausage meat with ½ cup soaked bread crumbs, grated lemon rind, nutmeg, mace, cayenne, and fine herbs.

  2. Stuff the turkey with the mixture and sew it up securely.

  3. Tie the turkey in a cloth at both ends.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil gently in water for 3 to 4 hours.

  2. Once cooked, coat the turkey with bread crumbs mixed with finely chopped parsley.

  3. Serve cold with a sauce made from lemon juice, grated lemon rind, mustard, pounded sugar, and oil to taste; mix 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

Fine hen turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole in its cloth.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture from the surface and seasons the meat during the curing rest.
Sausage meat
Adds richness and fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist during boiling.
Bread crumbs soaked in milk or cream
Binds the stuffing and keeps it soft and moist as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cold sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Boil gently in water for 3 to 4 hours. A rolling boil can toughen the meat and break the cloth wrapping, so the water should only simmer. Gentle heat lets the proteins set slowly, keeping the turkey tender and juicy.

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.

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