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Boiled Turkey

A whole turkey boiled with veal forcemeat, lemon, vegetables, and spices, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck the turkey.

  2. Singe the turkey.

  3. Draw the turkey.

  4. Fill the turkey with veal forcemeat.

  5. Truss the turkey securely.

  6. Rub the turkey, especially the breast, with slices of hard, acid lemon.

  7. Place the turkey in an oval pan.

Boil

  1. Cover the pan with hot water or stock.

  2. Add salt.

  3. Add carrot.

  4. Add onion stuck with cloves.

  5. Add peppercorns.

  6. Add celery.

  7. Add parsley.

  8. Bring the liquid to a boil.

  9. Skim the liquid.

  10. Let it simmer gently until tender.

  11. Drain the turkey.

Serve

  1. Serve the turkey on a hot dish.

  2. Pour over a rich white sauce.

  3. Serve with parsley and butter.

  4. Serve with celery sauce.

  5. Serve with melted butter flavored with horseradish.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main body of meat, which becomes tender through gentle simmering.
Veal forcemeat
Adds moisture and richness to the bird as it cooks inside the turkey.
Lemon
Its acidity brightens the flavor of the turkey's surface, especially the breast.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid, which the turkey absorbs.

The step that matters

Let it simmer gently until tender. Boiling vigorously toughens muscle proteins and can break the skin and dry the meat, so a gentle simmer keeps the turkey tender and moist.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, veal, lemon, carrot, clove, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, veal, lemon, carrot, clove, celery, 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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