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Roast Turkey

Roast turkey with butter, flour, and a bread-based stuffing, finished with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the turkey

  1. Stuff, truss, and rub the turkey with coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the turkey on its back on a rack in a dripping pan.

  3. Mix ½ cup butter with ¼ cup flour until creamy and spread it over the turkey's breast, legs, and wings.

  4. Dredge the bottom of the pan with flour.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned, then reduce heat.

  2. Baste every 15 minutes with ½ cup melted butter mixed with 2 cups boiling water.

  3. Turn the turkey on its breast to finish roasting.

Make the stuffing and gravy

  1. For stuffing, pour boiling water over stale bread and let it sit for 15 minutes.

  2. Press out excess water using cheesecloth, then mix in butter, seasonings, and celery.

  3. For gravy, pour off the liquid from the roasting pan, remove 4 tablespoons of fat, and brown it with 4 tablespoons of flour.

  4. Gradually stir in 2 cups of stock, cook for 5 minutes, season, and strain.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the skin brown during roasting.
Flour
Thickens the butter paste and the gravy, giving body to the sauce.
Stale bread
Absorbs liquid and holds its shape, giving the stuffing structure.
Stock
Adds savory flavor and liquid to the gravy.

The step that matters

Pressing out the bread's excess water. Bread soaked in boiling water becomes waterlogged. If too much water stays in, the stuffing turns soggy and dense instead of light and moist.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, flour, bread, pepper. 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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