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Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey prepared with onion, baking soda, butter, and optional sausage or ham, served with gravy and stewed fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Clean the turkey.

  2. Rub the inside with an onion or rinse it with water mixed with baking soda.

  3. Wash the turkey with cold water.

  4. Crush the point of the breastbone with a rolling pin for a round appearance.

  5. Truss the turkey like a chicken.

  6. Stuff the turkey with bread crumbs seasoned with pepper, salt, herbs, and butter.

Roast

  1. Place the turkey in a roasting pan.

  2. Dot the pan with lard or drippings.

  3. Add 3 cups of water to the pan.

  4. Baste the turkey often.

  5. When the breast is brown, cover it with a piece of paper.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Boil the giblets.

  2. Chop the giblets finely.

  3. Add the giblets to the gravy made in the roasting pan after removing the turkey.

  4. If there's too much fat, pour it off before adding giblets.

  5. If there's too little gravy, add water.

  6. Thicken the gravy.

  7. Season the gravy to taste.

  8. Pour some gravy around the turkey.

  9. Serve the rest of the gravy in a boat.

  10. Optionally curl fried sausage or thin slices of ham around the turkey.

  11. Serve with stewed cranberries or stewed apples.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Turkey + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 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 roasted centrepiece, with its meat cooking through in the pan.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the bread stuffing and helps the skin brown.
Bread crumbs (in the method)
Form the body of the stuffing, soaking up seasoning and juices as the bird roasts.
Giblets
Chopped and added to the gravy, adding savoury depth and body.

The step that matters

When the breast is brown, cover it with a piece of paper.. Covering the breast once it has browned stops it from darkening or drying out while the thighs and inner meat finish cooking.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, onion, pepper, butter, ham):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, onion, pepper, butter, ham. 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.

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