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Boiled Turkey

A turkey stuffed with oysters, boiled and served with a creamy oyster gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Fill the turkey's body with oysters.

  2. Place the turkey in a dish and steam it until cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the turkey and strain the gravy from the dish.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  3. Add the oyster liquor to the gravy and stew with some oysters.

  4. Whiten the sauce with a little boiled cream and pour it over the turkey.

Cook

  1. Cook the turkey for fifteen minutes per pound.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Flour and butter 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 and carries the flavour of the stuffing and sauce.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to both the stuffing and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the turkey instead of running off.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth body to the thickened gravy.
Oyster liquor
Concentrates the oyster flavour in the sauce and adds moisture.
Boiled cream
Whitens the sauce and adds richness and a softer, milder texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in the fat so it swells and thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw starchy taste. Adding it to liquid too quickly can clump it.

“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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