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To Boil Turkey

A boiled turkey stuffed with bread, herbs, and seasonings, served with a rich oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Boil Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Make a stuffing by mixing bread, herbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon peel, oysters or anchovy, butter, suet, and egg.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the turkey's crop and fasten the skin.

Boil and serve

  1. Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth and boil it until very white.

  2. Prepare a rich oyster sauce with butter, a little cream, and soy sauce.

  3. Pour the sauce over the turkey before serving.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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 by boiling until it turns very white.
Bread
Bulks out the stuffing and soaks up butter and egg to keep it moist.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich in texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to both the stuffing and the sauce.
Cream (in the method)
Makes the oyster sauce smooth and rich.

The step that matters

Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth and boil it until very white. Boiling at a steady simmer cooks the bird gently and evenly, while the floured cloth protects the skin. Overboiling can toughen the meat and break the cloth, so the cook must watch the heat closely.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, thyme, parsley, pepper, lemon, oyster):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, thyme, parsley, pepper, lemon, oyster. 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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