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Boiled Turkey

A whole turkey boiled with oyster stuffing, salted water, and optional flour coating, served with pickled salt pork and oyster or celery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the turkey as you would for baking or roasting.

  2. Fill the turkey with oyster stuffing.

  3. Tie the legs and wings close to the body.

Boil

  1. Place the turkey in salted boiling water, breast side down.

  2. Skim the water often.

  3. Boil for about 2 hours, but do not let the skin break.

  4. Optionally, roll the turkey in a cloth dipped in flour, but note this may affect the flavor of the broth.

  5. Boil a nicely pickled piece of salt pork.

Serve

  1. Serve with oyster or celery sauce.

  2. Serve a thin slice on each plate.

  3. Save the broth for soup by adding the same seasonings as for chicken soup.

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. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,255 recipes

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

  3. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

  4. Turkey + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together963 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Oyster + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,582 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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 supplies the meat and flavor carried into the broth.
Oyster stuffing
Fills the bird and adds moisture and savory flavor as it cooks inside the turkey.
Flour
Optional cloth coating that can change the flavor of the broth, as the record notes.

The step that matters

Keep the skin intact while boiling. Boiling at a steady simmer and not letting the skin break keeps the bird whole and its juices in the meat. Skimming the surface foam keeps the broth clear.

“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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