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Turkey Galantine

A stuffed turkey rolled with veal, bacon, herbs, truffles, nuts, and pickled gherkins, boiled and served cold with reduced broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Turkey Galantine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Bone the turkey by opening it at the back without tearing the skin and remove the tendons from the drumsticks.

  2. Pound the flesh of the drumsticks, veal, and bacon with salt, spices, and minced sweet herbs in a mortar.

Stuff and roll

  1. Spread the boned turkey on a linen cloth with the flesh side up and layer the stuffing to an inch thick.

  2. Add a row of smoked tongue or ham, followed by truffles, blanched almonds, pistachio nuts, and pickled gherkins.

  3. Top with remaining stuffing, roll the turkey tightly, and stitch it closed to enclose the stuffing.

  4. Cover the galantine with bacon, wrap it in a napkin, and tie the ends with string.

Cook and serve

  1. Bind with string to maintain shape and boil in broth until cooked through.

  2. Serve cold in a deep dish with strained and reduced broth poured over it.

  3. For jelly, boil turkey bones and neck in water for four hours, season, strain, reduce until jelly-like, and add white wine before pouring over the galantine.

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. Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the outer wrapper that holds the stuffing together and gives the sliced galantine its meaty body.
Lean veal
Adds a fine, tender texture to the pounded stuffing as it binds with the other meats.
Bacon
Adds fat and moisture that keeps the stuffing and outer meat from drying out during cooking.
Smoked tongue or ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a contrasting colour to the sliced centre.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the jelly that is poured over the galantine.

The step that matters

Rolling and tying the galantine. If the roll is loose or the stitching is weak, the stuffing can shift and gaps can form in the slices. Tight rolling and firm string keep the layers together through boiling.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, veal, ham, truffle, almond, pistachio, white wine):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, veal, ham, truffle, almond, pistachio, white wine. 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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