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Boiled Turkey

A whole turkey boiled slowly with cloves, pepper, marjoram, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,075 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the turkey as for roasting.

  2. Wrap the turkey in a cloth.

Boil

  1. Boil it slowly for 1.5 hours.

  2. Add cloves, black pepper, sweet marjoram, and coarse sea salt to the water.

  3. Skim the turkey well while boiling to keep it white.

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. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Turkey + marjoramtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Main protein; its muscle proteins firm and set as it cooks, giving the meat its structure.

The step that matters

Boil it slowly. Vigorous boiling agitates the meat and tightens its proteins, making it tough and stringy. A gentle simmer cooks the turkey through while keeping it tender and juicy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, pepper, marjoram):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pepper, marjoram. 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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