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Roasted Turkey

Roasted turkey stuffed with optional sausage, chestnuts, liver, herbs, bread, butter, lemon, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roasted Turkey

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

  1. Rub the turkey all over with coarse sea salt.

  2. Lard the turkey.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the turkey with sausage meat, mashed chestnuts, or a mixture of chopped liver, heart, gizzard, parsley, onions, sweet herbs, grated bread, butter, lemon juice, grated lemon peel, and egg yolks.

  2. Roast the turkey in a 350°F (175°C) oven for at least two hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with an egg yolk stirred in just before serving.

  2. Lard the turkey for a cold roast.

  3. Serve with spoonfuls of stiff currant jelly dropped all over.

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

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

  2. Chestnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Chestnut + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Turkey + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 carries the flavour of the stuffing and seasoning.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the lean turkey moist and helps it brown during roasting.
Egg yolks
Enrich the stuffing and thicken the gravy when stirred in just before serving.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, improving moisture and flavour.
Grated bread
Absorbs the juices and fat in the stuffing, giving it body and a soft texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with an egg yolk stirred in just before serving. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat. If the gravy boils after it is added, the yolk can scramble and turn grainy, so it should be stirred in off the heat or over very low heat.

Swap the chestnut

The recipe marks chestnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, liver, parsley, onion, bread, butter):

  1. Chestnutthe original
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits less well
  4. Peasfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, liver, parsley, onion, bread, butter. 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 →

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