Skip to main content
Main

Turkeys

A roasted turkey stuffed with butter, bread, herbs, lemon peel, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turkeys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the turkey properly and stuff it with the mixture of butter, grated bread, lemon peel, parsley, sweet herbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, cream, and egg yolks.

  2. Prepare a brisk fire and cover the turkey's breast with paper when roasting.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste the turkey continuously until it is nearly done.

  2. Dredge the turkey with flour and continue basting until fully cooked.

  3. Serve a large turkey with gravy, brown celery, or mushroom 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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

Butter or chopped suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Grated bread
Soaks up fat and liquid, giving the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing together and help it set as it cooks.

The step that matters

Baste the turkey continuously until it is nearly done. Basting spreads melted fat over the surface, which helps the skin brown and keeps the meat from drying out during a long roast.

“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 roasted turkey recipes

with Stuffing 7Poult 5with Chestnuts 4with Oysters 3 See all 122 →

You might also like

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