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Roast Turkey with Chestnut Stuffing and Sauce

Roast turkey stuffed with a mixture of veal, salt pork, and chestnuts, served with a chestnut sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Roast Turkey with Chestnut Stuffing and Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the turkey and lard the breast.

  2. Boil the chestnuts in water for a few minutes, then remove and rub off the thin, dark skin.

  3. Cover the chestnuts with boiling water and simmer for 1 hour, then mash them fine.

Stuff and roast

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped veal, chopped salt pork, ¼ of the mashed chestnuts, black pepper, salt, and stock or water.

  2. Stuff the turkey with the mixture, truss it, and roast.

  3. Use the remaining ¾ of the chestnuts to make a sauce to 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. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Chestnut + porktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 that holds the stuffing and cooks through during roasting.
Chestnuts
Add starchy body and a sweet, nutty flavour to both the stuffing and the sauce.
Veal
Adds savoury meat to the stuffing, giving it bulk and a tender, moist texture.
Salt pork
Contributes fat that keeps the stuffing moist and adds rich flavour.
Lard
Fat rubbed over the breast that promotes moistness and gentle browning during roasting.

The step that matters

Simmering the chestnuts until fully soft before mashing. Chestnuts that are not cooked through stay firm and grainy, so they mash unevenly and cannot blend smoothly into the stuffing or sauce.

“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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