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Roast Turkey

Roast turkey stuffed with suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, anchovy, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, thyme, and egg yolk, served with gravy and sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 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's breast.

  2. Fill the breast with forcemeat made from suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, anchovy, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, thyme, and egg yolk.

  3. Use butter instead of suet if suet is unavailable.

Roast the turkey

  1. Roast the turkey until golden brown.

  2. Cover the breast with white paper until nearly done.

  3. Prepare good gravy to serve with the turkey.

Make the bread sauce

  1. Boil bread crumbs in ½ pint water with mace, cloves, and whole pepper for 5-6 minutes.

  2. Remove the spices.

  3. Pour off the water.

  4. Mix the bread with butter and a little salt.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Peel and slice onions.

  2. Boil the onions in milk and water for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the water.

  4. Heat the onions with butter.

  5. Add a little flour.

  6. Stir in cream or milk.

  7. Serve the sauce in boats.

  8. Garnish with lemon.

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 richness and moisture to the forcemeat, keeping the stuffing from drying out.
Bread crumbs
Bind the forcemeat and soak up moisture, giving a soft, cohesive stuffing.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat ingredients together so it holds its shape when cooked.
Flour
Thickens the onion sauce with the butter and cream or milk.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the bread sauce and onion sauce, and can replace suet.
Onions
Provide sweetness and body to the onion sauce once softened.

The step that matters

Cover the breast with white paper until nearly done. Covering the breast shields the lean meat from direct heat so it cooks through without drying or over-browning before the rest of the bird is ready.

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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