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To Roast a Turkey

A turkey stuffed with a forcemeat of bread crumb, suet, sausage or veal, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and eggs, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Roast a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Make the forcemeat by mixing the bread crumb, shredded beef suet, sausage meat or veal, nutmeg, pepper, and salt in a bowl. Add the eggs and mix lightly.

  2. Stuff the turkey with the forcemeat and secure it.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the turkey a good distance from a clear, brisk fire.

  2. Dust and baste the turkey several times with cold lard.

  3. Roast for about 1 hour and 15 minutes if the turkey is of medium size.

  4. When cooked, froth it up again, dish it, and pour on the gravy or bread sauce.

  5. Garnish with lemon and pickles before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  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 forcemeat so it holds together when stuffed and roasted.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumb
Forms the body of the forcemeat and absorbs fat and juices.
Cold lard
Basting fat that helps the turkey skin brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Stuff the turkey with the forcemeat and secure it.. Forcemeat stuffed into a bird must be packed firmly enough to hold its shape yet left room to expand. Loose stuffing can fall out, and dense stuffing cooks slowly, so the centre may not reach a safe temperature with the outside already done.

“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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