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To Roast a Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, anchovy, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, thyme, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 ↓

To Roast a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Loosen the skin on the turkey's breast and fill it with force-meat made from suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, anchovy, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, thyme, and egg yolk. If you don't have suet, use butter instead.

  2. Alternatively, spread bread and butter thinly, grate nutmeg over it, roll it up, and stuff the turkey's breast.

Roast the turkey

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

  2. Prepare good gravy to serve with the turkey.

Make the sauces

  1. For bread sauce, boil a good piece of bread in 1 pint of water with mace, cloves, and whole pepper for 5-6 times, then remove the spices and pour off the water. Beat the bread with butter and a little salt.

  2. For onion sauce, peel and slice onions, boil them in milk for half an hour, drain, and beat with butter, a little flour, and cream or milk.

  3. For oyster sauce, strain the liquor from ½ pint of oysters, heat with mace, add white wine, boil, and thicken with butter.

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

Turkey breast (in the method)
Provides the main meat, which the stuffing moistens and flavours as it roasts.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Form the body of the stuffing and soak up fat and juices.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing ingredients together so they hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread sauce and onion sauce become smooth.

The step that matters

Covering the breast with white paper. Covering the breast while the turkey roasts shields the lean meat from direct heat, so it cooks through without drying out before the skin is golden.

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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