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Turkey Trussed for Boil

A boiled turkey stuffed with a forcemeat of trimmings and bacon, served with a truffle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turkey Trussed for Boil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Select a young, plump, freshly-killed hen turkey.

  2. Smell the turkey and discard any that are moldy.

  3. Wash the turkey thoroughly and scrub with a soft brush.

  4. Cut about 1 pound of turkey trimmings into 1.5-inch balls.

  5. Pound the remaining turkey trimmings with the trimmings and an equal weight of fat bacon until smooth.

  6. Season the forcemeat with salt, grated nutmeg, and pepper.

  7. Mix the whole trimmings into the forcemeat and stuff the turkey.

Hang and roast

  1. Let the stuffed turkey hang for 5 to 6 days.

  2. Before roasting, place a slice of fat bacon on the breast and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Baste the turkey liberally while roasting.

Make the truffle sauce

  1. For truffle sauce, mince 4 truffles and sauté them in a saucepan with a slice of fresh butter for 10 minutes.

  2. Add ½ pint of brown gravy, a little pepper, salt, and a glass of sherry.

  3. Simmer the sauce for 15 minutes, skim off the fat, and serve.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Turkey + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  4. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Provide the aromatic flavour that defines the dish and its sauce.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture to the forcemeat and bastes the breast while roasting.
Turkey trimmings
Form the forcemeat that fills the bird, giving it body and savoury flavour.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness to the truffle sauce as the truffles cook.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished truffle sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the truffle sauce and skim the fat. Simmering concentrates the gravy and sherry into a rich sauce, while skimming removes surplus fat that would otherwise make it greasy and dull the flavour.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, turkey, pepper, sauce, butter, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, turkey, pepper, sauce, butter, sherry. 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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