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Turkey Stuffed with Sweet Potatoes

A roasted turkey stuffed with a mixture of onions, sausage, bread, eggs, and sweet potatoes, seasoned with herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Turkey Stuffed with Sweet Potatoes

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 stuffing

  1. Fry the chopped onions in butter over low heat until soft, without browning.

  2. Add the sausage meat and cook for a few minutes, stirring continuously.

  3. Soak the bread in cold water for 5 minutes, then press out all the water.

  4. Mix the soaked bread with the onion and sausage mixture.

Stuff and roast

  1. Add the eggs and sweet potatoes, then season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, thyme, and sage.

  2. Stuff the turkey with the mixture, truss the bird, and cover it with slices of larding pork.

  3. Roast the turkey carefully in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Onion + sweet potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together960 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread
Soaked and pressed, it gives the stuffing body while holding moisture without becoming soggy.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when sliced.
Sweet potatoes
Add moisture, sweetness and a soft texture to the stuffing.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stuffing.
Butter
Carries the onion flavor and adds richness to the stuffing base.
White onions
Provide aromatic sweetness and moisture as they soften in butter.

The step that matters

Pressing out the bread. Bread soaked in water must be squeezed dry, because excess water would make the stuffing soggy and weaken its structure as it cooks.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, bread, egg, sweet potato, pepper, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, bread, egg, sweet potato, pepper, nutmeg. 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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