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Roast Turkey

A turkey stuffed with veal forcemeat, buttered or baconed, roasted and served with sausages, ham or tongue, and optional mushroom or chestnut sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Fill the breast of the turkey with veal forcemeat and truss it.

  2. Cover the breast with buttered paper or fat bacon, removing it 20 minutes before finishing.

Roast

  1. Baste the turkey well while roasting.

  2. Roast according to its size, for 1.5 to 2 hours at 350°F (175°C).

Serve

  1. Garnish with nicely baked sausages and serve with boiled ham or tongue.

  2. Serve with mushroom sauce if stuffed with mushrooms, or chestnut sauce if using chestnut forcemeat.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Turkey + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together205 recipes

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

  3. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Turkey + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

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, cooked whole by roasting.
Veal forcemeat
Fills the breast, adding moisture and flavour as the turkey roasts.
Butter or fat bacon
Fat that covers the breast, helping keep the meat moist and promoting browning.
Boiled ham or tongue
Served alongside the turkey as a savoury accompaniment.
Sausages
Baked and used as a garnish, adding browned savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Removing the breast cover 20 minutes before finishing. Removing the buttered paper or bacon late lets the breast surface brown and crisp. Removing it too early can leave the skin pale, while leaving it on too long can prevent browning.

“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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