Skip to main content
Main

An Old Virginia Receipt for Roasting Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with a breadcrumb and meat mixture, served with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

An Old Virginia Receipt for Roasting Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the stuffing

  1. Mix bread crumbs, shredded beef suet, sausage or veal, nutmeg, pepper, and salt in a bowl to make the stuffing. Add 3 eggs and mix lightly.

  2. Stuff the turkey with the mixture.

Roast

  1. Place the turkey in a roasting pan and roast in a very hot oven (400°F / 200°C). Dust and baste the turkey several times with cold lard for better rising.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Cut bread crumbs into fine pieces and soak in cold water with peppercorns, salt, and onion for the sauce. Boil until the bread is soft, then beat well.

  2. Add ¼ lb butter and 2 tablespoons thick cream, and serve hot with the turkey.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when mixed and cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and richly flavoured during roasting.
Cold lard
Fat for basting that helps the turkey skin brown and crisp.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished sauce.
Thick cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Basting with cold lard. Cold lard is applied to the turkey several times during roasting. Repeated basting with fat keeps the surface from drying out and helps it brown evenly, so the skin should be covered each time rather than left bare.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, beef, meat, pepper, egg, butter, cream):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, meat, pepper, egg, butter, cream. 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.

More roasted turkey recipes

with Stuffing 7Poult 5with Chestnuts 4with Oysters 3 See all 122 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes