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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) · 7 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 the turkey

  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 breast down in salted boiling water.

  2. Skim the water often and boil for about 2 hours, without breaking the skin.

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

Serve

  1. Serve with oyster or celery sauce.

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

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. Pork + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Is the main protein; cooked gently in water so it stays moist and tender.
Oyster stuffing
Fills the bird and adds savory flavor while it cooks inside the turkey.
Salt pork
Adds savory, salty fat flavor to the dish when boiled and served in thin slices.
Flour
Forms a light coating on the cloth wrap that can help protect the skin during boiling.

The step that matters

Skim the water and keep the skin intact during the 2-hour boil. Foam and impurities rising from the bird can cloud the cooking liquid and dull flavor, so skimming keeps it clean. Boiling too vigorously can split the skin and let the meat dry out and lose juices into the water.

“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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