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To Prepare and Cook the Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with a mixture of bread, salt pork, onion, sage, and marjoram, basted with water and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

To Prepare and Cook the Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Wash the turkey minimally and dry it thoroughly.

  2. Season the inside with salt and pepper.

  3. In a bowl, combine crumbled bread, chopped salt pork, onion, sage, marjoram, salt, and pepper.

  4. Lightly fill the turkey with the dressing, sew up the openings, and tie the wings and legs close to the body.

Roast and baste

  1. Place the turkey breast side down on a trivet in a roasting pan, seasoning it well with salt and pepper.

  2. Keep a small amount of water in the pan; allow it to almost scorch, then dredge with flour and add more water.

  3. Baste the turkey every 15 minutes with water from a separate pan, turning it as it browns.

  4. In the final stages, turn the turkey onto its back, baste with butter, and dredge with flour to froth.

Serve

  1. Cook the gizzard, liver, and heart slowly on the back of the stove until tender, then serve on the platter.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  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, with its meat cooking through during roasting.
Baker's bread
Soaks up juices and butter in the dressing, giving it a soft, moist texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the dressing as it renders during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin brown and turn golden when basted.
Flour
Dredging the bird helps form a crisp, browned, frothy surface on the skin.

The step that matters

Basting with water in the pan. Letting the pan water almost scorch before adding more water builds browned drippings that flavor the gravy. Basting every 15 minutes keeps the skin moist so it browns evenly rather than drying out.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pepper, bread, pork, sage, marjoram, butter. 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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