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Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey is a turkey roasted with bread crumb stuffing and butter, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Stuff the turkey's body and neck with bread crumbs moistened with melted butter and seasoned with pepper, salt, and celery salt.

  3. Truss the turkey and rub it with butter.

  4. Place the turkey breast down on a rack in the roasting pan.

Roast

  1. Roast until the back is nicely browned, then turn it over to brown the breast.

  2. Pour 1 pint of water into the pan after browning.

  3. Baste every 15 minutes or whenever the skin becomes very dry.

  4. Roast for about 25 minutes per pound.

  5. If the turkey browns too quickly, cover the breast with well-buttered heavy paper.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Turkey + celerytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 cooks through in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb melted butter and fill the cavity, adding moisture and body to the stuffing.
Melted butter
Adds fat that carries seasoning and promotes browning on the skin.

The step that matters

Baste every 15 minutes or whenever the skin becomes very dry. Skin dries and browns unevenly during long roasting. Regular basting with fat and pan liquid keeps the surface moist and golden, and the protective butter paper prevents the breast from over-browning before the meat is cooked through.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, butter, 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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