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To Bake a Turkey

A method for baking a turkey with optional stuffing, flour coating, and gravy made from the giblets or oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and bread work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 822 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Bake a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Wash the turkey and rub it all over with salt and pepper.

  2. Make a stuffing of bread crumbs or oysters.

  3. Fill the turkey with the stuffing, not too tightly.

  4. Sew or tie up the opening.

  5. Dredge the turkey with flour.

  6. Pour 2 pints of water into the pan. Alternatively, use oyster liquor and enough water to make 2 pints.

Bake and baste

  1. Baste the turkey very frequently.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes per pound, adjusting for your oven's speed.

  3. When done and browned, remove the turkey from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off some fat from the gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  3. Mince the giblets and add them to the gravy. Alternatively, mince 6 oysters and add them if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

  4. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, cooking through as the bird bakes and browns.
Flour
Dredged on the outside and browned, it helps the skin brown and thickens the gravy.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing or gravy when used.

The step that matters

Basting the turkey very frequently. Frequent basting moistens the surface as it bakes, helping the skin brown evenly and reducing the risk of drying out the lean meat.

“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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