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Turkey Boned and Forced

A turkey that has been boned, stuffed with sausage meat, and roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turkey Boned and Forced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Remove all bones from the turkey except for the pinions, without opening the bird.

  2. Shape the turkey and fill it with sausage meat, starting with the legs and wings.

  3. Plump the breast and restore the turkey's original shape, then tie it securely at both ends and the legs.

  4. Insert a skewer through the ends and body, and another through the wings and body.

  5. Tie twine over the back, securing it under the skewer ends and around the pinions.

Roast the turkey

  1. If a cradle spit is unavailable, use a bottle jack to support the turkey.

  2. Flour the turkey well and place it far from the fire until heated through.

  3. Baste it continuously with butter while roasting for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, boil the bones in 1½ pints of water with salt, celery, peppercorns, and parsley.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Turkey + celerytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sausage meat
Fills the boned bird, adding flavour and moisture to the stuffing as it cooks.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes browning and keeps the turkey skin moist during roasting.
Turkey
Main structure of the dish; boning and reshaping it lets it hold the stuffing.

The step that matters

Baste continuously with butter while roasting. Turkey is lean, so regular basting with fat helps keep the meat moist and the skin golden as the bird roasts.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, butter, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, butter, 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.

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