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To Roast a Turkey

A turkey stuffed with sausage, bread crumbs, parsley, salt pork, lemon peel, butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and egg, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

To Roast a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the turkey thoroughly.

  2. Make stuffing by mixing sausage meat, bread crumbs, parsley, salt pork, lemon peel, butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and egg.

  3. Fill the crop and body of the turkey with the stuffing and sew it up.

  4. Tie the legs and wings.

  5. Cover the breast with white paper to prevent scorching.

  6. Rub the turkey with butter, salt, and flour before roasting.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast slowly at first, basting often.

  2. After 30 minutes, add ½ pint of water to the pan.

  3. Roast for 2 to 2½ hours.

  4. Flour again near the end.

  5. Serve with gravy.

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

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

  5. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

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

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 meat cooks through during the long roast.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing as it cooks inside the bird.
Bread crumbs
Absorb fat and juices, giving the stuffing a soft, moist body.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when sliced.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and richness on the skin.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Roast slowly at first, basting often. Low early heat cooks the bird evenly without scorching, and frequent basting keeps the surface moist so the skin browns gradually rather than drying out or burning.

“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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