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Poultry, Roasted

Roasted whole poultry stuffed with sage and onions or meat, then roasted and feathers trimmed for pillows.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and sage work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 154 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Poultry, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stuff

  1. Pluck and draw the poultry carefully.

  2. Stuff the poultry with sage and onions for geese and ducks, or with veal forcemeat or pork sausage meat for turkeys.

Roast

  1. Roast the poultry until fully cooked.

Finish the feathers

  1. Trim and dry the feathers in the oven for use in pillows and cushions.

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. Turkey + sagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sage + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Turkey + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Poultry
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and browns as it roasts.
Sage
Adds a herbal aroma that flavors the stuffing and the meat around it.
Onions
Add moisture and mild sweetness to the stuffing as they cook.
Veal forcemeat or pork sausage meat
Forms a rich, moist stuffing that seasons the bird from inside.

The step that matters

Roast the poultry until fully cooked. Poultry must reach a fully cooked centre to be safe to eat. Stuffing slows heat reaching the middle of the bird, so the cook must check that the thickest parts and the stuffing are cooked through rather than judging by the outside colour alone.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, sage, veal):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, sage, veal. 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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