Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
To Roast a Turkey
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the turkey thoroughly and rub it with salt and pepper.
Prepare a filling by toasting bread until crisp, then moisten it with water and season with pepper, butter, and a little salt.
Roast
Place the turkey in a pan with 1 quart of water and add the gizzard and giblets.
Dredge the turkey well with flour and baste it frequently.
Roast a large turkey for 3 hours or a small one for 1.5 hours.
Serve
Cut up the giblets and serve them in the gravy, which will thicken from the flour.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together822 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,592 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,636 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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 dish; its meat is cooked by slow roasting in the pan.
- Flour
- Dredged over the turkey, it thickens the pan juices into gravy and helps brown the surface.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness to the bread filling.
- Bread
- Toasted and moistened to make the filling, giving it body and texture.
The step that matters
Basting the turkey frequently. Basting spreads the pan juices over the bird, keeping the surface moist and promoting even browning while the large cut roasts for hours.
“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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