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To Roast a Turkey

A turkey stuffed with a mixture of beef suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, thyme, and egg, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Roast a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the turkey in a cool, airy place for 10 to 12 days if the weather is cold.

  2. Loosen the skin of the breast and fill it with the force-meat mixture.

  3. To make the force-meat, combine beef suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, and thyme, then chop and mix well with the yolk of an egg.

  4. Stuff the mixture into the turkey's breast.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the turkey until golden brown, basting it well.

  2. Cover the breast with white paper until it is nearly done, about 1 hour.

  3. Serve with good gravy and bread sauce.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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 of the dish and cooks through to become tender meat.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the force-meat moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up fat and juices, giving the force-meat body and a soft texture.
Egg
Binds the force-meat so it holds together when stuffed and roasted.

The step that matters

Stuff the mixture into the turkey's breast. Packing the force-meat loosely under the skin lets heat reach it and keeps it moist. If it is packed too tightly, the stuffing can stay undercooked in the centre while the meat overcooks.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, beef, bread, lemon, pepper, parsley, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, beef, bread, lemon, pepper, parsley, thyme. 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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