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Roast Turkey, a Nice Way to Avoid Burning

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey, a Nice Way to Avoid Burning

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dress the turkey carefully and rub the inside with coarse sea salt. Hang it up to drain for 1 hour.

  2. Wipe the crop and inside dry with a napkin just before adding the dressing.

  3. Fill the crop with dressing and sew it up, then sew the body closed.

  4. Prepare the dressing with fine bread crumbs, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and moistened with water or milk and a beaten egg. Add sage, onions, oysters, raisins, or herbs as desired.

  5. Tie the turkey's legs to the body to prevent them from sprawling.

  6. Melt a little lard and spread it over a clean cloth, then lay it over the turkey. Grease a paper the same way and place it over the cloth, followed by a thick piece of dry brown paper.

  7. Place 1 cup of water in the roasting pan and roast the turkey without basting. The greased cloth and papers will keep it moist.

  8. If the top paper scorches, replace it until the turkey is nearly done. Then remove all coverings for a few minutes to allow it to brown.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Turkey + sagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, pepper, butter, milk, egg, sage. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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