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To Roast a Turkey

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

  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.

  2. If you don't have suet, use butter or make force-meat by spreading bread and butter thinly, grating nutmeg over it, rolling it up, and stuffing the turkey's breast.

  3. Roast the turkey until golden brown, pinning white paper on the breast until it's nearly done.

  4. Prepare good gravy to serve with the turkey.

  5. For bread sauce, boil crumbs in water with mace, cloves, and whole pepper for 5-6 times, then remove spices and pour off water.

  6. Beat the bread with butter and a little salt.

  7. For onion sauce, peel and slice onions, boil in milk and water for 30 minutes, drain, then beat with butter, a little flour, and cream or milk, and serve garnished 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

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.

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