Skip to main content
Main

To Roast Turkey

A method for roasting a turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, beef suet, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, salt, milk, egg, sausage meat, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Pick, draw, and singe the turkey well.

  2. Press down the breastbone and truss the turkey.

  3. Stuff the breast with bread crumbs, minced beef suet or marrow, minced parsley, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  4. Wet the stuffing with milk and egg, and add sausage meat if desired.

  5. Sew up the neck opening.

Roast and serve

  1. Cover the breast with a buttered sheet of writing paper to prevent scorching.

  2. Remove the paper shortly before finishing to brown the breast.

  3. Baste well with butter.

  4. Roast the turkey for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  5. Serve with gravy sauce and bread sauce.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Turkey + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together248 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 and provides the bulk of the meat to be roasted.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and egg to form a moist, binding stuffing.
Egg
Binds the stuffing together so it holds its shape during roasting.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs so the stuffing stays tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and flavor on the breast skin.
Minced beef suet or marrow
Adds fat that enriches the stuffing and keeps it moist during roasting.

The step that matters

Covering the breast with buttered paper. The breast cooks faster than the dense stuffing and legs, so covering it prevents scorching. Removing the paper near the end lets the surface brown. Timing the removal matters because leaving the paper on too long stops browning.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, beef, nutmeg, pepper, milk, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, beef, nutmeg, pepper, milk, egg. 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.

More roast turkey recipes

or Chicken 17with Oyster Dressing 8with Chestnuts 4with Giblet Sauce 3with Gravy 3with Oysters 3 See all 259 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes