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A turkey stuffed with butter, bread, herbs, and egg yolks, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turkeys

Ingredients

Directions

Stuff and roast

  1. Truss the turkey properly and stuff it with the butter, grated bread, lemon peel, parsley, sweet herbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, cream, and egg yolks mixed together.

  2. Prepare a brisk fire and cover the turkey's breast with paper while roasting.

  3. Baste the turkey with flour until it is done.

Serve

  1. For a large turkey, serve with gravy; for a smaller turkey, serve with gravy and bread sauce.

Make the bread sauce

  1. To make bread sauce, boil thin slices of bread in cold water with peppercorns, salt, and an onion until soft, then beat it fine.

  2. Mix the bread with ¼ pound of butter and 2 tablespoons of thick cream, boil, and serve with the turkey.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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

Butter or suet
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the stuffing rich and tender as it roasts.
Grated bread
Soaks up juices and gives the stuffing body; it also thickens the bread sauce.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing together and enrich it as they set during cooking.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to both the stuffing and the bread sauce.

The step that matters

Covering the turkey's breast with paper. The breast is lean and browns faster than the rest of the bird, so covering it helps keep it from drying out or over-browning before the stuffing and thicker parts are cooked through.

“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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