Skip to main content
Main

To Boil a Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with bread, butter, cream, oysters, and egg yolks, served with oyster‑flavored butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Make a stuffing by mixing chopped bread, butter, cream, oysters, and egg yolks.

  2. Sew the stuffing into the turkey.

  3. Dredge the turkey with flour.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the turkey in a pot with enough cold water to cover it and add salt.

  2. Bring to a simmer and cook for 2.5 hours, or less for a smaller turkey.

  3. Skim the surface while boiling.

  4. For a nicer presentation, wrap the turkey in a cloth dredged with flour.

  5. Serve with drawn butter mixed with some oysters.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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, cooked gently in water until tender.
Chopped bread
Bulks out the stuffing and soaks up the cream and butter for a moist filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing together and add richness as they set during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and the drawn butter served alongside.
Cream
Moistens the stuffing and adds richness.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing and the serving butter.

The step that matters

Simmer, don't boil hard. A vigorous boil toughens the turkey's proteins and can break up the stuffing, so keeping the water at a gentle simmer gives a more tender result. Skimming removes foam that would otherwise cloud the broth and cling to the bird.

“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.

More boiled turkey recipes

with Oyster Sauce 11Eggs 4with Celery Sauce 4with Oyster Stuffing 4Celery Sauce for 3 See all 186 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes