Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Turkey

A whole turkey boiled with oyster stuffing, salt pork, and optional flour coating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

  4. Optionally, roll the turkey in a cloth dipped in flour.

Boil and serve

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

  2. Skim the water often and boil for about 2 hours, but do not let the skin break.

  3. Boil a piece of salt pork and serve a thin slice on each plate.

  4. Serve with oyster or celery sauce.

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

Whole turkey
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the water until tender.
Oyster stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and savory flavor to the meat as it cooks.
Salt pork
Adds salty, savory fat flavor to the dish, served as a thin slice alongside.

The step that matters

Keep the skin intact while boiling. Boiling at a rolling pace can split the skin and let juices escape, leaving the meat drier and less appealing. Keeping the water at a gentle boil and skimming foam helps the skin stay whole and the flavor clean.

“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.

More boiled turkey recipes

with Oyster Sauce 11Eggs 4with Celery Sauce 4with Oyster Stuffing 4Celery Sauce for 3 See all 186 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipes