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Turkey, Boiled

A boiled turkey stuffed with veal, flavored with sweet herbs, shallots, lemon, and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Turkey, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Stuff the turkey with veal stuffing, leaving room for it to swell.

  2. Pull the skin of the breast over the opening and fasten it at the back.

  3. Place the gizzard in one wing and the liver in the other.

  4. Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth.

  5. Place it in a pot of warm water, covering the bird.

Boil and make the sauce

  1. Keep the water skimmed while boiling the turkey.

  2. In a separate pan, fry the fat until brown, then remove it.

  3. Add gravy, chopped mushrooms, sweet herbs, shallots, and lemon juice; simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Skim off any scum.

  5. Remove the herbs.

  6. Mix in butter kneaded with flour.

  7. Boil and stir until thick without lumps.

Serve

  1. Serve the turkey on a hot dish with sauce and lemon slices.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Turkey + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked gently by the simmering water.
Butter kneaded with flour
Thickens the sauce as the flour starch swells when boiled and stirred.
Shallots
Add a mild savoury onion flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce's rich flavour.

The step that matters

Boil and stir until thick without lumps. Flour must be whisked into the hot liquid so its starch granules disperse and swell evenly; if added unevenly or not boiled long enough, the sauce stays lumpy or thin.

“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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