Skip to main content
Main

Modern Cookery

A turkey stuffed with forcemeat, boiled and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turkey and oyster work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 473 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the legs by cutting through the skin around the first joint and pulling the bird away from a strong hook.

  2. Wash the turkey thoroughly and dry it.

  3. Fill the breast with forcemeat.

  4. Truss the turkey by drawing the legs into the body and breaking the breastbone for a plump appearance.

Cook

  1. Place the turkey in a pot with enough warm water to cover it by an inch.

  2. Bring the water to a boil for 10 minutes, then cool it down by adding cold water.

  3. Remove excess water, leaving enough to keep the bird covered until ready to serve.

  4. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  5. Simmer gently for 1.5 to 2.25 hours, depending on the size of the turkey.

Serve

  1. Serve with oyster sauce, celery sauce, or white sauce, along with boiled tongue or ham if desired.

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

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

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 its size sets how long it needs to simmer.
Forcemeat
Fills the breast, adding moisture and flavour as the bird cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Simmering below a rolling boil cooks the bird evenly and keeps the meat tender. A hard boil toughens the proteins and can break the skin, so the bird stays covered at a gentle heat.

“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 stuffed turkey recipes

Oyster 24Chestnut 8 See all 65 →

You might also like

Turkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipesTurkey DressingTurkey Dressing24 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipes