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Turkey, to Roast

A roasted turkey stuffed with sausage, suet, bread crumbs, parsley, sweet herbs, and eggs, served with gravy and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turkey, to Roast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Stuff the turkey with sausage meat, suet, bread crumbs, parsley, and sweet herbs, moistened with eggs.

  3. Reserve some stuffing for balls to place around the dish.

  4. Score the gizzard and dip it in egg yolk; season with cayenne.

  5. Cover the liver with buttered paper and place one under each wing.

Roast

  1. Roast the turkey at a distance from the fire for the first half hour.

  2. Dredge the turkey with flour and baste with butter.

  3. Roast a turkey poult for 1.5 hours or a large turkey for 3 hours, adjusting time for size.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown gravy and liver sauce, and accompany with ham, tongue, or bacon.

  2. Add vegetables like broccoli, sprouts, and turnips, and garnish with lemon slices or sausages.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 its size sets the cooking time.
Sausage meat
Adds savory flavor and richness to the stuffing.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and tender as it roasts.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat, giving the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing together and help it hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and aids browning as the turkey is basted.

The step that matters

Roast at a distance from the fire for the first half hour. Starting gently lets the stuffing and thick meat heat through before the outside browns. Too much direct heat early can char the skin while the centre stays underdone.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, bread, egg, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, bread, egg, pepper, butter, flour. 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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