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Boiling Poultry

A boiled turkey stuffed with oysters, bread crumbs, and spices, served with oyster sauce and garnished with barberries and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiling Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck and dress the turkey 3–4 days after killing for best results.

  2. Tie the legs to the body and cut off the head and neck.

  3. Mix bread crumbs, chopped oysters, lemon peel, salt, pepper, nutmeg, butter, eggs, and cream into a light stuffing.

  4. Stuff the turkey with part of the mixture and form the rest into balls.

  5. Sew up the turkey and dredge it with flour.

Cook

  1. Place the turkey in a kettle of cold water, cover, and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off any scum that rises, then cover the kettle again.

  3. Boil slowly for 30 minutes, then remove from heat and let it sit covered to finish cooking.

Serve

  1. Serve with oyster sauce poured over it and garnish with barberries and lemon.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  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

Eggs
Bind the stuffing together and help it hold its light texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing.
Flour
Dredging coat that helps the turkey's outer surface set and hold together.

The step that matters

Boiling the stuffed turkey. Boiling slowly keeps the heat gentle so the turkey cooks through without the outer meat toughening, and skimming removes scum that would cloud the cooking liquid.

“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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