Skip to main content
Main

Roasted Turkey

A turkey stuffed with truffles, hay, sausage, and egg yolk, roasted with lemon, bacon, and garlic, served with gravy and garnish.

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

Why it works: Lemon and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,893 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roasted Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Empty and pick the turkey a few hours after it is killed.

  2. Stuff the belly with truffle parings and clean hay.

  3. Hang the turkey by the legs for a week before dressing.

  4. Wash the truffle parings in warm water.

  5. Stew some truffle parings in the gravy.

  6. Mix sausage meat with the egg yolk.

  7. Rub the breast with lemon juice.

  8. Cover the breast with lemon slices and bacon.

  9. Wrap the turkey in paper.

Roast and serve

  1. Cook the turkey over a brisk fire, gradually bringing it closer.

  2. Remove the paper 15 minutes before done to brown the turkey.

  3. Roast the turkey for 1 to 1.5 hours, depending on size.

  4. Serve the turkey with plain gravy flavored with garlic.

  5. Garnish with sausages, curled bacon, cresses, and lemon.

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. Lemon + garlictop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

  2. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Truffle + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together527 recipes

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

  4. Turkey + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Meat + garlictop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,530 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 whole and carved for serving.
Truffles
Adds a strong earthy aroma that perfumes the bird and the gravy.
Sausage meat
Bound with egg yolk to form a rich, moist stuffing-style mixture.
Egg yolk
Binds the sausage meat so it holds together while cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the turkey.
Bacon
Lays over the breast to add fat and savoury flavour as it cooks.

The step that matters

Remove the paper 15 minutes before done. The paper protects the bird while it cooks through; removing it near the end lets the surface brown. Removing it too early dries the meat, and leaving it on leaves the skin pale.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, truffle, meat, egg, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, truffle, meat, egg, lemon. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes