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To Roast and Stuff a Turkey

A turkey roasted with a stuffing of bread crumbs, currants, butter, and optional meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast and Stuff a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the turkey by cutting open the back of the neck and removing the crop.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, currants, nutmeg, butter, and egg.

  2. For a meatier stuffing, combine veal, suet, bread crumbs, anchovy, lemon zest, white pepper, salt, and eggs.

Roast

  1. Stuff the turkey with the mixture and roast until fully cooked.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  3. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Turkey + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the stuffing and absorb moisture from the butter and egg.
Egg
Binds the stuffing together so it holds its shape when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and keeping the stuffing moist.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the stuffing.
Minced veal
Adds meaty body and texture to the optional richer stuffing.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, nutmeg, butter, egg, veal, anchovy):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, nutmeg, butter, egg, veal, anchovy. 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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