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A Boned Jellied Turkey

A boned turkey stuffed with pork and corned tongue, boiled, then set in gelatin to form a jellied dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Boned Jellied Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Using a sharp knife, carefully remove the flesh from the turkey bones, starting at the back of the neck.

  2. Cut off the wings at the joints and remove the thigh and leg bones, leaving the legs whole.

  3. Withdraw the carcass and sew up the openings with a needle and thread, except for the neck.

  4. In a bowl, combine the corned tongue and fresh pork, season with salt, cayenne, and white pepper.

  5. Fill the turkey with the meat mixture, turn the neck skin back, and sew it tightly.

  6. Wrap the turkey in a cloth and tie the ends.

Cook and set

  1. Place the wrapped turkey in a pot of warm water and boil for 2 hours.

  2. After boiling, place the turkey on a dish with another dish on top and a weight, leaving the cloth on, and let it cool completely.

  3. Remove the cloth and any fat or threads.

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in ½ pint of boiling water.

  2. Add lemon juice, vinegar, and salt to the gelatin mixture.

  3. Pour the jelly mixture onto a dish the size of the turkey and let it cool until stiff.

  4. Dissolve another box of gelatin in 1 cup cold water and 2 cups boiling water.

  5. Flavor the second gelatin mixture as before (with lemon juice, vinegar, and salt).

  6. Pour small amounts of this jelly into plates.

  7. Optionally color the jelly with burnt sugar or slices of raw beet.

  8. Once the jelly is set, cut it into shapes for decoration.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly that holds the sliced turkey and decorations.
Fresh pork
Adds rich fat and moisture to the filling, keeping the cooked meat juicy.
Corned tongue
Contributes savory, salty flavor and meaty texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Let the turkey cool under weight. Pressing the wrapped turkey while it cools keeps it compact and evenly shaped, so the slices hold together cleanly. Cooling it fully before unwrapping lets the filling firm up, which makes neat cutting possible.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, pork, pepper, lemon, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pork, pepper, lemon, vinegar, sugar. 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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