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Turkey

A turkey stuffed with a mixture of veal, suet, bread, herbs, spices, and egg yolks, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Mix veal, grated bread, suet, parsley, thyme, cloves, nutmeg, lemon peel, pepper, salt, and egg yolks to make the force-meat.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the turkey's cavity.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste the turkey well and froth it up.

  2. Roast until the smoke draws from the breast to the fire; this takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes for a large turkey.

  3. Serve with gravy, brown celery, or mushroom 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the bulk of the force-meat, giving the stuffing a firm, meaty body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Grated bread
Soaks up juices and binds the stuffing so it holds together.
Egg yolks
Bind the force-meat and help it set firm when cooked.

The step that matters

Roast until the smoke draws from the breast to the fire. This visual cue signals the turkey is nearly done. Because the stuffing sits inside the cavity, the bird must cook long enough for the stuffing and thick meat to reach safe temperatures, so judging by the record's cue alone risks undercooking.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, parsley, thyme, nutmeg, lemon, pepper. 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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