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To Boil Turkey

A turkey boiled after being stuffed with oysters or anchovy, butter, suet, egg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Boil Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters or chop the anchovy.

  2. Mix with butter, suet, and the egg.

Cook and serve

  1. Stuff this mixture into the turkey's crop and secure the skin.

  2. Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth and boil until cooked through.

  3. Serve with oyster sauce made from butter, cream, and soy, or liver and lemon 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Oysters or anchovy
Adds a salty, savory depth that seasons the filling from within.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Suet
Adds hard fat that melts into the filling, keeping it moist and tender.
Egg
Binds the filling together so it holds its shape when cooked.

The step that matters

Boil until cooked through. A whole bird stuffed with a dense filling cooks unevenly, and the stuffing sits at the centre where heat arrives last. Check that the filling and the thickest parts of the meat have fully cooked before serving.

“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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