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Turkey Boiled

A whole turkey is stuffed, wrapped, and boiled in salted water, served with white sauce or parsley and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Turkey and truffle work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Turkey Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the turkey with truffles, chestnuts, or sausage meat.

  2. Wrap the turkey in a clean floured cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Add water to a pot and bring to a boil, adding coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the wrapped turkey in the boiling water, cover, and simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Remove any scum that forms on the surface during cooking.

  4. Serve with white sauce or parsley and butter.

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. Turkey + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Turkey + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Hen turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is cooked and served.
Truffles, chestnuts, or sausage meat
Stuffing that adds flavour and moisture to the bird as it cooks.

The step that matters

Removing scum from the surface. Foam and scum rising during simmering are impurities from the meat and water. Skimming them keeps the broth clear and the flavour clean.

“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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