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Roast Turret

A roasted turkey stuffed with a crumbly cracker and salt pork mixture, seasoned with sage, savory, and optional herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Roast Turret

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Do not wash the turkey; instead, wipe it inside and out with a dry towel.

  2. Mix crumbled cracker or bread with chopped salt pork, sage, savory, pepper, and an egg to make stuffing.

  3. Stuff the turkey with the mixture, sew it closed, and secure the wings and legs with skewers or string.

Roast

  1. If the turkey is tough, steam it for 1-2 hours before baking.

  2. Roast the turkey slowly for 2.5 to 3 hours at 300°F (150°C).

  3. Roast in a dripping pan without water, basting occasionally with seasoned water and butter.

  4. Bake until uniformly light brown, avoiding burning.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Slow roasting cooks the large bird through while keeping the meat moist and tender.
Egg
Binds the crumbled cracker or bread into a cohesive stuffing.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that moistens the stuffing as it cooks.
Cracker or stale bread
Forms the body of the stuffing and absorbs fat and juices.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, promoting browning and rich flavor on the skin.

The step that matters

Bake until uniformly light brown, avoiding burning. Sugars and proteins on the skin brown through the Maillard reaction at high surface heat, so the bird can darken unevenly or scorch before the inside is cooked. Basting with butter helps even coloring, and checking color keeps the skin from burning.

Swap the marjoram

The recipe marks marjoram as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, pork, sage, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Marjoramthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, pork, sage, egg, butter, pepper. 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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