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To Roast a Turkey

A turkey stuffed with suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, anchovy, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, thyme, and egg yolk, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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 turkey's breast and fill it with force meat made from suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, anchovy, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, and thyme.

  2. Chop and mix these ingredients with the egg yolk, then stuff the mixture into the turkey's breast.

  3. If you don't have suet, use butter instead.

Roast and make the sauces

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

  2. Prepare good gravy to serve with the turkey.

  3. For bread sauce, boil a piece of crusty bread in 1 pint of water with mace, cloves, and whole pepper for 5-6 times.

  4. Remove the spices, pour off the water, and mix the bread with butter and a little salt.

  5. For onion sauce, peel and slice onions, then boil them in milk and water for half an hour.

  6. Drain the water, mash the onions with butter, add a little flour, and stir in cream or milk.

  7. Serve the sauce with lemon.

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
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing, keeping it from drying out during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Bind the stuffing and absorb fat and juices, giving it a moist texture.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing ingredients together so they hold their shape.
Anchovy
Adds savory depth to the stuffing without a distinctly fishy flavor.
Crusty bread
Thickens the bread sauce as it softens in the spiced water.

The step that matters

Covering the breast with white paper. Covering the breast late in roasting shields the delicate meat from direct heat, so the bird browns without the breast overcooking before the thighs are done.

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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