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To Roast a Turkey

A turkey roasted with stuffing of suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, anchovy, spices, and egg yolk, served with gravy, bread sauce, onion sauce, and oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 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 breast of the turkey.

  2. Fill it with stuffing made from suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, anchovy, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, thyme, and egg yolk. If you don't have suet, use butter or spread thin bread and butter with grated nutmeg.

  3. Roll it up and stuff the breast.

Roast and make the sauces

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

  2. Boil bread crumbs in water with mace, cloves, and whole pepper for 5-6 times. Strain and mix with butter and salt.

  3. Boil sliced onions in milk and water for 30 minutes. Drain, then mix with butter, a little flour, and cream or milk.

  4. Strain the liquor from oysters. Heat with mace, add white wine, and thicken with butter rolled in flour.

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

Suet or butter
Enriches the stuffing with fat, keeping it moist and rich as it roasts.
Bread crumbs
Bind the stuffing and absorb the fat and juices, giving it body.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing ingredients together so they hold their shape.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they boil, giving the sauce a mild, mellow flavour.
Flour
Thickens the onion sauce and the oyster sauce when cooked with butter.
Oysters
Their liquor adds a briny, savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Covering the breast with white paper. Covering the breast shields the lean meat from direct heat, so it finishes cooking through without drying out while the rest of the bird browns.

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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