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Turkey A-LA-daube

A slow‑cooked turkey stuffed with oysters, bread crumbs, herbs, and butter, served in a rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turkey A-LA-daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Stuff the boned turkey with chopped oysters, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, shallots, thyme, parsley, and butter.

  2. Tie up the turkey and wrap it in a cloth.

  3. Boil the turkey gently until cooked, being careful not to overboil.

Make the gravy and finish

  1. Prepare gravy by simmering turkey bones with veal, mutton, bacon, salt, pepper, shallots, and mace.

  2. Strain the gravy and stew the turkey in it for 30 minutes.

  3. Thicken the gravy with mushrooms or other desired ingredients 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through by gentle boiling and stewing.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and give the stuffing a soft, moist body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and keeping the stuffing moist.
Mushrooms
Thicken the gravy and add earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the turkey gently. Vigorous boiling toughens meat proteins and can break the turkey apart, so it should cook at a gentle simmer until just done.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, oyster, bread, pepper, thyme, parsley, butter):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, oyster, bread, pepper, thyme, parsley, butter. 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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