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Turkey, to Boil

A turkey poult is boiled with veal seasoning, served with white sauce, parsley butter, oyster sauce, and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turkey, to Boil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Stuff the turkey poult with veal seasoning.

  2. Boil the turkey poult for 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes, or boil a large turkey for 2 hours or more.

Serve

  1. Serve with white sauce or a mixture of parsley and butter, and oyster sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

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

  4. Sauce + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 poult
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and moist when simmered gently in water.
Veal seasoning
Flavors the turkey from inside as it cooks in the stuffing cavity.
White sauce
Adds creamy richness and moisture that complements the mild boiled meat.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the parsley sauce served with the turkey.

The step that matters

Boiling the turkey. Boiling for too long toughens the meat, while too short a time can leave it undercooked near the bone. Cooking time depends on the bird's size, so check that the meat is fully cooked before serving.

“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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