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To Boil Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with bread, herbs, and spices, served with a rich oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Boil Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Make a stuffing by mixing bread, herbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon peel, oysters or anchovy, butter, suet, and egg.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the turkey's crop and fasten the skin.

Boil and serve

  1. Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth and boil until very white.

  2. Prepare a rich oyster sauce with butter, cream, and soy sauce, if desired, and pour it over the turkey before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Is the main cooked meat, which turns white and tender when boiled.
Bread
Absorbs moisture and binds the stuffing so it holds together.
Egg
Binds the stuffing ingredients together as it sets.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stuffing and sauce a smooth flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the oyster sauce.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and tender during cooking.

The step that matters

Wrapping the turkey in a floured cloth before boiling. The flour coating and cloth hold the bird's shape and protect the skin while it cooks in water. If the cloth is loose or unevenly floured, the skin can tear or stick, and the bird may cook unevenly.

“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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