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Roast Turkey

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 ↓

Roast Turkey

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stuff the turkey with soft bread or cracker crumbs seasoned with sage, thyme, coarse sea salt, and pepper.

  2. Moisten the stuffing with ½ cup melted butter and enough hot water to make it quite moist.

  3. Add 1 beaten egg to the stuffing.

  4. For variety, you can add oysters, chestnuts, or chopped celery.

  5. Bake the turkey as you would roast duck and serve with giblet gravy.

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. Sage + chestnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the chestnut

The recipe marks chestnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sage, thyme, pepper, butter, egg, oyster):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, thyme, pepper, butter, egg, oyster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More roast turkey recipes

or Chicken 17with Oyster Dressing 8with Chestnuts 4with Giblet Sauce 3with Gravy 3with Oysters 3 See all 259 →

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