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Roast Turkey

A turkey stuffed with suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, anchovy, spices, and egg yolk, roasted and served with gravy, onion sauce, and oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 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 ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Loosen the skin on the turkey breast and fill it with forcemeat made from suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, anchovy, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, thyme, and egg yolk.

  2. If you don't have suet, use butter instead.

Roast the turkey

  1. Roast the turkey until golden brown, covering the breast with white paper until nearly done.

Make the sauces

  1. Prepare gravy and bread sauce by boiling bread crumbs in water with mace, cloves, and whole pepper for 5-6 times.

  2. Remove the spices, pour off the water, and mix the bread with butter and a little salt.

  3. For onion sauce, boil sliced onions in milk and water for 30 minutes, drain, and mix with butter, a little flour, and cream or milk.

  4. For oyster sauce, strain the liquor from oysters, heat with mace, add oysters and white wine, and let it boil briefly.

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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and rich during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the forcemeat and bread sauce body.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat so it holds together in the breast.
Oysters
Add briny savour to the oyster sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the bread sauce and onion sauce.

The step that matters

Covering the breast with white paper. Covering the breast slows browning while the rest of the bird cooks, so the meat can finish cooking without over-darkening or drying out before it is done.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, lemon, anchovy, 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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