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English Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, eggs, and herbs, served with gravy, fried oysters, celery sauce, and stewed gooseberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

English Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stuff

  1. Prepare the turkey several days before cooking.

  2. Stuff the turkey with bread crumbs moistened with butter and beaten eggs, and season with salt, pepper, parsley, sage, thyme, or marjoram.

  3. Sew up and skewer the turkey, then place it in a roasting rack within a dripping pan.

Roast and baste

  1. Spread bits of butter on the turkey and roast, turning and basting frequently with butter, pepper, salt, and water.

  2. A few minutes before it is done, glaze the turkey with the raw egg white.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Once cooked, dish the turkey and pour off most of the fat.

  2. Add chopped giblets and the water they were boiled in to the pan, then thicken with flour and butter rubbed together.

  3. Stir the mixture in the dripping pan and let it boil thoroughly before serving in a gravy boat.

  4. Garnish with fried oysters and serve with celery sauce and stewed gooseberries.

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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the stuffing and soak up butter and juices.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture and helps the skin brown while basting.
Eggs
Bind the moistened bread crumb stuffing together.
Flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy thoroughly after thickening. Flour must be heated fully to swell its starch and thicken the liquid, and to cook off its raw, pasty taste. Stopping early leaves the gravy thin or floury.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, butter, egg, pepper, sage, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Winter savoryfits about as well
  4. Rosemaryfits less well

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