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To Ronft and Stuff a Turkey

A turkey roasted with breadcrumb and currant stuffing, served with a wine and mace sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Ronft and Stuff a Turkey

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 the stuffing

  1. Slit up the back of the neck of the turkey and remove the crop.

  2. Mix bread crumbs, currants, nutmeg, fresh butter, and a beaten egg to create a stuffing. Alternatively, mix minced veal, fat, bread crumbs, anchovy, lemon zest, white pepper, and two beaten eggs for a different stuffing.

Stuff and roast

  1. Fill the turkey with the stuffing.

  2. Skewer it closed with the head over the wing.

  3. Flour the turkey.

  4. Baste it with butter.

  5. Roast the turkey at 400°F (200°C) with gravy sauce underneath.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil slices of bread with water, white wine, mace, sugar, and fresh butter until smooth but not too thick.

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

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

  2. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Turkey + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 that the stuffing fills and the roasting cooks through.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown.
Currants
Add sweetness and small bursts of fruit flavor to the stuffing.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Make the sauce until smooth but not too thick. Bread thickens as it boils and cools, so a sauce that is too thick turns pasty. Boiling it until just smooth gives a pourable sauce that coats the turkey without going gluey.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, nutmeg, butter, egg, veal, anchovy):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, nutmeg, butter, egg, veal, anchovy. 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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