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To Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with sausage meat or bread stuffing, served with gravy, bread sauce, crumbs, and beaten egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and bread work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 822 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Draw the sinews of the legs and twist the head under the wing.

  2. Carefully draw the turkey without tearing the liver or letting the gall touch it.

  3. Add crumbs and a beaten egg to the sausage meat stuffing.

  4. Stuff the turkey with sausage meat or bread stuffing.

Roast and serve

  1. Ensure the heat is constant to the breast to cook it thoroughly.

  2. Place a strip of paper on the bone to prevent scorching.

  3. Baste the turkey well and froth it up.

  4. Serve with gravy and plenty of bread 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. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Turkey + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 of the dish and is cooked through by steady heat.
Sausage meat or bread stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and flavour to the bird as it roasts.
Crumbs
Bind the sausage meat stuffing and give it a lighter, more cohesive texture.
Beaten egg
Binds the stuffing together so it holds its shape when cooked.

The step that matters

Keep the heat constant to the breast. The breast is thick and cooks more slowly than the legs. Steady, even heat helps it reach a safe, thoroughly cooked temperature without drying out the rest of the bird.

“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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