Skip to main content
Main

To Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with suet, parsley, bread crumbs, herbs, and eggs, served with optional gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

To Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Prepare a stuffing by mixing suet, parsley, bread crumbs, marjoram, thyme, lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  2. Bind the mixture with raw eggs and fill the turkey's crop with it.

Roast and serve

  1. Cover the turkey's breast with buttered paper to prevent scorching.

  2. If desired, fry sausages and place them around the turkey in the dish.

  3. Roast a 12-pound turkey for 2 hours, keeping it a good distance from the fire and basting regularly.

  4. Ten minutes before serving, remove the paper and brush the turkey with a mixture of butter and flour.

  5. Serve with gravy and bread sauce if desired.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  5. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raw eggs
Bind the stuffing together so it holds its shape when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and absorb moisture in the stuffing, keeping it soft rather than dense.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Butter and flour
Brushed on near the end to promote browning and a golden surface on the turkey.

The step that matters

Keeping the turkey away from the fire and basting it. Strong direct heat can scorch the skin before the inside cooks through. Gentle, distant heat with regular basting keeps the bird moist and evenly cooked, while the buttered paper shields the breast from scorching.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, bread, marjoram, lemon, thyme, pepper, egg):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, bread, marjoram, lemon, thyme, pepper, egg. 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.

More roast turkey recipes

or Chicken 17with Oyster Dressing 8with Chestnuts 4with Giblet Sauce 3with Gravy 3with Oysters 3 See all 259 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes