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Boiling Poultry

A boiled turkey stuffed with a butter, egg, and cream mixture, served with oyster sauce, force-meat balls, barberries, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Boiling Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Do not dress the turkey until 3 days after killing.

  2. Draw the turkey at the rump and cut off the head.

  3. Mix lemon peel, salt, pepper, nutmeg, butter, eggs, and cream into a light force-meat.

  4. Stuff the turkey with part of the mixture and form the rest into balls.

  5. Sew up the turkey and dredge it with flour.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the turkey in a kettle of cold water, cover, and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off the scum as it rises, then cover the kettle again.

  3. If the turkey is young and moderate in size, boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and let it sit covered to finish cooking in steam.

  5. Serve with oyster sauce poured over it and force-meat balls around it, garnished with barberries and lemon.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the force-meat so the stuffing and balls hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, keeping the force-meat moist and tender.
Flour
Dredging coat that helps the turkey's outer surface hold together during boiling.
Oysters
Provide a briny, savory flavor to the oyster sauce served with the turkey.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the force-meat.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then boil slowly. Boiling too hard or too long can toughen the meat and break apart the force-meat. A gentle simmer, followed by resting covered so residual steam finishes cooking, keeps the bird tender and intact.

“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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