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Boiled Turkey

A whole turkey boiled with forcemeat stuffing, served with sauce and boiled meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and ham work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss and stuff the turkey with forcemeat.

  2. Place the turkey in a pot and cover it with enough water.

Boil and serve

  1. Bring the water to a boil and carefully remove any scum.

  2. Reduce the heat and let it simmer gently for 1.5 to 1.75 hours, depending on the size.

  3. Serve with your choice of sauce and boiled meats.

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 + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

  2. Turkey + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + hamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in water until tender.
Forcemeat
Stuffs the bird, adding flavour and moisture to the meat as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and can break the skin and cook the outside before the centre is done. A gentle simmer cooks the turkey evenly and keeps it tender and moist.

“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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