Skip to main content
Main

Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey stuffed with oysters and corn hoecake dressing, seasoned with onion, salt, pepper, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. If using an old turkey, parboil it until tender.

  2. Remove the turkey and prepare a dressing of corn hoecake, seasoned with onion, coarse sea salt, and pepper.

  3. Add the well-drained oysters to the dressing.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the mixture into the turkey and sprinkle the outside with flour, salt, and pepper.

  2. Drop bits of lard over the turkey.

  3. Place 1 pint of water in the roasting pan and baste the turkey often.

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. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Corn + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the dressing.
Corn hoecake
Soaks up juices and gives the stuffing body.
Lard
Adds fat that helps the outside brown and turn crisp.
Flour
Sprinkled on the outside, it helps the skin brown.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury depth to the dressing.

The step that matters

Parboil the old turkey until tender. An older bird has tougher connective tissue. Moist heat from parboiling breaks down collagen, so the meat becomes tender before it is roasted.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, oyster, corn, pepper, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, oyster, corn, pepper, 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.

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

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipes