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Filling Foe Boned Turkey

A boned turkey stuffed with sausage meat, oysters, bread crumbs, chestnuts, champignons, and herbs, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Filling Foe Boned Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine sausage meat, oysters, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, marjoram, thyme, celery seed, champignons, and chestnuts in a bowl.

  2. Sew up any cuts in the wings and legs of the turkey using a long thread of strong darning cotton.

Stuff and roast

  1. Start at the backbone, fill the turkey with the mixture, and sew up to the neck, shaping it with a broad band of muslin.

  2. Roast the turkey until it is a fine brown color.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Marjoram + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together615 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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

Sausage meat
Provides fat and savory flavor that keeps the stuffing moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat, giving the stuffing a soft, cohesive body.
Oysters
Add a briny, savory flavor that seasons the stuffing from within.

The step that matters

Fill the turkey loosely before roasting. Stuffing expands and its dense mass heats slowly, so a tightly packed cavity can stay undercooked near the center while the bird browns outside. Leaving room lets heat and steam move through the filling.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, oyster, bread, pepper, marjoram, thyme, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, oyster, bread, pepper, marjoram, thyme, celery. 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 stuffed turkey recipes

Oyster 24Chestnut 8 See all 65 →

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