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Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey seasoned with salt and baking soda, basted with butter and flour, served with a gravy made from giblet broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the turkey thoroughly and rinse it with water mixed with baking soda.

  2. Rub the turkey with coarse sea salt.

  3. Boil the giblets in a small saucepan covered with water.

Roast and baste

  1. In the roasting pan, add 2 tablespoons of butter for every pint of water used.

  2. Baste the turkey carefully as it begins to brown, ensuring it is evenly turned to the heat.

  3. Keep the turkey moist and tender until it is golden brown all over.

  4. Use the top of the gravy for basting to keep the skin well buttered.

Brown and finish

  1. In the last third of the cooking time, flour the turkey.

  2. Brown the turkey, basting it several times.

  3. Before flouring, add clear butter to the surface of the roast if the gravy is not rich enough.

  4. Dredge flour quickly over the turkey, ensuring all sides are coated.

  5. Finish cooking until the turkey has a crisp, brown crust.

  6. Dish the turkey and finish the gravy by adding the giblet boiling water and straining it over chopped giblets.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Turkey + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together190 recipes

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

  4. Butter + livertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turkey + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together963 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main roast; its skin browns and crisps during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat to the pan and skin, helping basting promote even browning and richness.
Flour
Coats the skin so it browns and crisps into a golden crust.
Giblets
Simmered in water to make a stock that enriches the gravy.

The step that matters

Flouring the turkey. Flour must be dredged evenly and quickly over the bird in the last third of cooking. Uneven or late flouring leaves pale or clumpy patches, while the flour's starch and fat help form a crisp, brown crust.

“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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