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To Boast a Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with seasoned forcemeat, basted in butter, served with gravy and optional fried sausages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and chestnut work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 136 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Boast a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the turkey in a cool, airy place for up to two weeks if needed.

  2. Wash and dry the turkey thoroughly with clean cloths.

  3. Fill the breast with forcemeat or well-seasoned sausage meat and truss the turkey firmly.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the turkey over a clear fire.

  2. Baste constantly with butter until cooked.

  3. Cover the breast with buttered paper for the first part of cooking.

  4. Remove the paper 20 minutes before done.

  5. Serve with brown gravy and bread sauce, garnished with fried sausages if desired.

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 + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 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. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + chestnuttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, cooking through over the fire to become tender meat.
Butter
Bastes the bird, adding fat and moisture to the surface and promoting golden browning.
Forcemeat or sausage meat
Fills the breast, adding moisture and seasoned flavour as the bird cooks.

The step that matters

Remove the paper 20 minutes before done. Buttered paper shields the breast early so it cooks gently without over-browning. Removing it near the end lets the surface brown and crisp, and timing it wrongly can leave the skin pale or the breast overcooked.

Swap the chestnut

The recipe marks chestnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, butter, meat):

  1. Chestnutthe original
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Nutsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, meat. 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 roasted turkey recipes

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

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