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Turkey Boned and Forced

A boned and stuffed turkey roasted with sausage filling, butter basting, and served with a gravy made from the bird's bones.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turkey Boned and Forced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Remove all bones from the turkey except for the pinions, without opening the bird.

  2. Shape the turkey.

  3. Fill the turkey with sausage meat, starting with the legs and wings.

  4. Restore the turkey's original shape.

  5. Tie the turkey securely at both ends and the legs.

  6. Insert an iron skewer through the legs and body.

  7. Insert another iron skewer through the wings and body.

  8. Lay twine over the back, passing it under the skewer ends and fastening it at the neck.

  9. If a cradle spit is unavailable, use a bottle jack to support the turkey.

  10. Flour the turkey well.

Roast the turkey

  1. Place the turkey far from the fire until heated through.

  2. Baste the turkey continuously with butter while roasting for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Boil the bones in 1½ pints of water with salt, celery, peppercorns, and parsley.

  2. Brown the ham in butter.

  3. Add a light dredge of flour and cayenne.

  4. Pour in the strained broth.

  5. Stew the gravy until ready to serve.

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

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sausage meat
Fills the bird, adding moisture and richness to the cooked meat.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes browning and a golden, rich skin.
Flour
Dredged on the bird and used in the gravy to help thicken it.
Lean ham
Browned in butter to add savoury flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Place the turkey far from the fire until heated through. Gentle, distant heat lets the large bird cook through evenly, while direct intense heat would scorch the outside before the centre is done.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, butter, parsley, ham, flour, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, butter, parsley, ham, flour, pepper. 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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