Skip to main content
Main

Turkeys

A turkey stuffed with butter, bread, herbs, and eggs, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turkeys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the turkey properly and stuff it with the butter, grated bread, lemon peel, parsley, sweet herbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, cream, and egg yolks mixed together.

  2. Prepare a brisk fire and cover the turkey's breast with paper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast until nearly done, then remove the paper, dredge with flour, and continue basting until fully cooked.

  2. Serve a large turkey with gravy, brown celery, or mushroom sauce; serve a smaller turkey with gravy and 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter or suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Grated bread
Soaks up juices and fat, giving the stuffing a soft, tender body.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing together and help it set as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing, keeping it tender.

The step that matters

Roast until nearly done, then remove the paper. Paper shields the breast from the fire early on, so it does not dry out. Removing it near the end lets the skin brown and crisp, and dredging with flour helps build a golden crust. Basting keeps the surface moist while the bird finishes cooking through.

“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 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes