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To Boll a Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with a mixture of bread, oysters, lemon peel, spices, butter, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Boll a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Make a stuffing with grated bread, chopped oysters, grated lemon peel, pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, butter, cream, and yolks of eggs.

  2. Fill the turkey's cavity with the stuffing.

  3. Form any leftover stuffing into balls.

Boil the turkey

  1. Flour the turkey.

  2. Place the turkey in cold water.

  3. Skim off any foam as it rises.

  4. Let it boil gently for about an hour.

  5. Boil the stuffing balls.

Serve

  1. Serve them around the turkey with oyster sauce.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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 gently by boiling in water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the stuffing, giving it a softer, moister texture.
Grated bread
Gives the stuffing bulk and absorbs the moisture and fat from the other ingredients.
Yolks of eggs
Bind the stuffing together and help it set as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the stuffing soft.
Chopped oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Let it boil gently. Boiling too hard can toss and break up the turkey and make the meat tough and dry. A gentle simmer cooks it through while keeping it tender and intact. Skimming foam keeps the broth clear.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, bread, oyster, pepper, nutmeg, cream. 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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