Skip to main content
Main

Turkey Boned and Forced

A boneless turkey stuffed with sausage meat, roasted with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Turkey Boned and Forced

Ingredients

Directions

Bone and stuff

  1. Remove all bones from the turkey except for the pinions, without opening the bird.

  2. Fill the turkey with sausage meat, starting with the legs and wings.

  3. Shape the turkey by plumping the breast and restoring the turkey's original form.

Truss

  1. Tie the turkey securely at both ends and the legs.

  2. Insert a skewer through the ends and body.

  3. Insert another skewer through the wings and body.

  4. Lay twine over the back, passing it under the first skewer, crossing it in the center, and under the second skewer.

  5. Fasten the twine at the neck to keep the pinions in place.

Roast

  1. Flour the turkey well.

  2. Place the turkey far from the fire until heated through.

  3. Baste the turkey continuously with butter while roasting.

  4. Roast for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turkey + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together963 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish; boning lets it be stuffed and reshaped before roasting.
Sausage meat
Fills the cavity, adding fat and flavour that keep the lean interior moist.
Butter
Basting adds fat that promotes browning and a moist, glossy skin.
Flour
Coating the bird helps the skin brown and form a crisp surface.

The step that matters

Remove the bones without opening the bird. The skin must stay intact over the whole carcass. A tear lets the sausage stuffing escape and dries the meat during roasting, so work slowly around the joints.

“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.

You might also like

Turkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes