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Roast Turkey, Stuffed

Roast Turkey, Stuffed is a whole turkey filled with a bread and herb mixture, baked with butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey, Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the turkey

  1. Singe, draw, wash, and dry the turkey.

  2. Stuff the turkey with the soaked bread mixture and sew up the openings.

  3. Tie the legs and wings tightly against the body.

Roast

  1. Place the turkey in a roasting pan with plenty of water, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Baste the turkey well and often in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  3. If the tips of the wings, legs, neck, and tail brown too quickly, cover them with a dough jacket made of flour and water.

  4. Remove the dough jacket before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with watercress and grapes, and always with cranberries.

  2. For gravy, remove excess grease from the pan, add milk or water, and cook until the dressing loosens.

  3. Stir in browned flour and add the cooked and chopped giblets.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Sage + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, and its meat cooks through during roasting.
Dry bread
Soaked bread in the stuffing absorbs moisture and gives the dressing a soft, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin brown as the bird roasts.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan juices into gravy and adds a toasted, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Basting and covering the tips. Basting often keeps the surface moist and browning even, while the thin wings, legs, neck, and tail can scorch before the thick breast cooks through, so a flour-and-water dough jacket shields them.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, pepper, butter, sage, celery, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, pepper, butter, sage, celery, egg. 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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