Skip to main content
Main

Turkey a LA Flamande, Or, Dinde Poudree

A boiled turkey stuffed with sausage and breadcrumbs, coated with breadcrumbs and parsley, served cold with a lemon mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turkey a LA Flamande, Or, Dinde Poudree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cure

  1. Prepare the turkey by wiping the inside with a dry cloth; do not wash it.

  2. Sprinkle a little salt inside to draw out the blood. Let the turkey sit for a couple of hours, then drain the turkey and wipe again.

  3. Rub the outside of the turkey with ½ cup coarse sea salt mixed with 1 tablespoon pounded sugar.

  4. Turn the turkey every day for four days.

Stuff and cook

  1. Fill the turkey with equal parts sausage meat and bread crumbs soaked in boiling milk or cream, wrung dry.

  2. Season the filling with grated lemon rind, nutmeg, mace, cayenne, and fine herbs.

  3. Sew the turkey securely, truss it, and roll it in a cloth, tying it closely at both ends.

  4. Boil gently for 3 to 4 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, sprinkle the turkey with fine bread crumbs mixed with finely chopped parsley.

  2. Make the sauce by mixing strained juice, grated rind of 2 lemons, 1 teaspoon mustard, 1 teaspoon pounded sugar, and enough oil to balance acidity; mix well.

  3. Serve cold with the 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 whole and served cold.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and firms the meat during the multi-day cure.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savoury richness to the stuffing, keeping the filling moist.
Bread crumbs
Absorb milk or cream to bind the stuffing and keep it moist.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3 to 4 hours. A gentle simmer cooks the stuffed bird through without toughening the proteins. Vigorous boiling can make the meat dry and stringy and can split the cloth wrapping.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, sugar, meat, lemon, nutmeg, bread, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, sugar, meat, lemon, nutmeg, bread, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipes