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Boned Turkey Boiled

A whole boned turkey boiled with lemon, celery, parsley, onion, herbs, cloves, peppercorns, and salt, served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Boned Turkey Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the turkey breast with lemon juice.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine boiling water, celery, parsley, onion, herbs, cloves, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Add the turkey and cook slowly for about 2.5 hours until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with lemon, parsley, and fried bacon rolls.

  2. Accompany with white sauce and other sauces like celery, chestnut, or oyster.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Boned turkey
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender and firm as it cooks slowly in liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the turkey breast.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Cooking the turkey slowly. Gentle simmering keeps the meat moist and tender. Boiling hard tightens the muscle proteins and makes the turkey dry and tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, lemon, celery, parsley, clove, sauce):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, lemon, celery, parsley, clove, sauce. 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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