Skip to main content
Main

Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey is a whole turkey prepared with a bread and butter stuffing, seasoned, steamed, and basted in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Pick and singe the turkey, then dip it three times in boiling water and once in cold water, holding it by the legs. Drain the turkey.

  2. Soak the bread crusts in boiling water until soft.

  3. Add butter, pepper, salt, and eggs to the soaked bread, mixing well by hand.

  4. Rub the inside of the turkey with pepper and salt.

  5. Stuff the turkey. Sew up the openings securely.

  6. Tie the legs down. Press the wings to the sides. Secure them with cord or skewers.

Roast the turkey

  1. Steam the turkey for 1 to 3 hours until tender.

  2. Place the turkey in a dripping pan. Skewer a piece of salt pork on the breast.

  3. Add the turkey fat, dredging with flour. Add 1 quart of boiling water to the pan.

  4. Baste often until the turkey is brown and tender.

  5. Remove the turkey to a hot platter. Serve with cranberry sauce and giblet gravy.

Make the giblet gravy

  1. Place the dripping pan on the stove. Skim off excess fat. Add more water if needed.

  2. Chop the boiled heart, gizzard, and liver. Add them to the gravy with their cooking water.

  3. Season the gravy with salt and pepper. Thicken with a flour and water mixture.

  4. Boil until cooked, stirring frequently.

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

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

  2. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

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

  3. Pork + livertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 body of the dish and carries the flavour of the stuffing and drippings.
Eggs
Bind the bread stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Bread
Soaked and mixed with eggs and butter to form a moist stuffing that absorbs juices.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, keeping it moist and tender.
Flour
Dredged on the bird to help brown the skin and later thickens the gravy.
Salt pork
Fat that bastes the breast as it melts, adding richness and encouraging browning.

The step that matters

Baste often until the turkey is brown and tender. Basting moistens the surface and carries drippings across it, which helps the skin brown evenly while the meat stays juicy rather than drying out during roasting.

“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.

More roast turkey recipes

or Chicken 17with Oyster Dressing 8with Chestnuts 4with Giblet Sauce 3with Gravy 3with Oysters 3 See all 259 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes