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Turkey, Boiled

A boiled turkey stuffed with sausage meat, served with forcemeat balls, celery, and a seasoned stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Turkey, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Prepare the turkey for boiling and truss it.

  2. Stuff the crop with sausage meat.

  3. Wrap the bird in well-buttered paper and place the turkey in a pan.

  4. Cover the turkey with boiling stock or water.

  5. When the liquid boils, add the onions, carrots, turnips, bouquet garni, peppercorns, and salt.

  6. Cover the pot.

Boil and prepare the accompaniments

  1. Cook gently for 1.5 to 2.5 hours, depending on the size of the turkey.

  2. Make the forcemeat balls and fry them in a little hot fat or butter.

  3. Cut the celery into neat pieces.

  4. Boil the celery in well-seasoned stock or water until tender.

Serve

  1. Remove the trussing skewers and strings from the turkey.

  2. Place the turkey on a hot dish.

  3. Pour the sauce over the turkey.

  4. Garnish with celery, diced vegetables, and forcemeat balls.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in liquid until tender.
Sausage meat
Stuffed into the crop, adding richness and moisture to the bird as it cooks.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic flavour and a tender crisp texture as a garnish.
Celery sauce
Coats the turkey with a savoury, moist finish when poured over it.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 1.5 to 2.5 hours. Boiling vigorously toughens the meat and can break the bird apart. A gentle simmer cooks the turkey evenly and keeps the flesh tender and moist.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, celery, sauce, carrot, turnip, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, celery, sauce, carrot, turnip, parsley. 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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