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Turkey, to Roast

A roasted turkey stuffed with sausage meat, suet, bread crumbs, parsley, sweet herbs, and eggs, served with gravy or sauce.

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

Turkey, to Roast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Stuff the turkey with sausage meat, suet, bread crumbs, parsley, sweet herbs, and eggs.

  3. Reserve some stuffing for balls around the dish.

  4. Score the gizzard and dip it in egg yolk.

  5. Season the gizzard with cayenne pepper.

  6. Cover the liver with buttered paper.

  7. Place a piece of buttered paper under each pinion.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the turkey at a distance from the fire for the first 30 minutes.

  2. Dredge the turkey with flour.

  3. Baste the turkey with 1 ounce of butter.

  4. Roast a turkey poultry for 1.5 hours or a large turkey for 3 hours, adjusting time based on size.

  5. Serve with brown gravy, liver sauce, fried sausages, or force-meat balls.

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, cooking through as the centerpiece of the roast.
Sausage meat
Adds savory fat and moisture to the stuffing, keeping the interior tender as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that melts during roasting, keeping the stuffing moist and rich.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat, giving the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing together so it holds its shape when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavor on the outside of the bird.

The step that matters

Roast at a distance from the fire for the first 30 minutes. Starting gently keeps the outside from scorching before the thick meat and stuffing heat through. Roasting too close to the fire can brown the skin unevenly while the centre stays underdone.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, bread, egg, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, bread, egg, pepper, flour, butter. 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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