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To Roast Turkey

A turkey roasted with an oyster or anchovy stuffing, butter, suet, egg, flour, and a sauce of butter, cream, and optional soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters or chop the anchovy.

  2. Mix oysters or anchovy with butter, suet, and egg.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the turkey's crop.

Truss and boil

  1. Fasten the skin.

  2. Wrap the turkey in a floured cloth.

  3. Boil the wrapped turkey to make it white.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare oyster sauce with butter, cream, and soy sauce.

  2. Pour the sauce over the turkey.

Roast and serve

  1. For roasting, draw the sinews of the leg.

  2. Twist the head under the wing.

  3. Be careful not to tear the liver or let the gall touch it.

  4. Stuff with sausage meat or bread stuffing, ensuring even cooking.

  5. Cover the bone with a strip of paper to prevent scorching.

  6. Baste well.

  7. Serve with gravy 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the oyster or anchovy stuffing together so it holds its shape during cooking.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the stuffing and the sauce, aiding flavor and browning.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the oyster sauce.
Flour
Forms a cloth coating around the turkey during boiling, helping protect the skin.

The step that matters

Be careful not to tear the liver or let the gall touch it.. Bile from the gall bladder gives a bitter taste, so if it touches the liver or meat the bitterness spreads through the dish. Keeping the organs intact prevents this.

“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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