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Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with fowl stuffing, seasoned with salt, and coated with dripping, lard, or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Truss the turkey as directed in the trussing chapter.

  2. Fill the crop with fowl stuffing.

  3. Cover the breast with writing paper.

  4. Spread dripping, lard, or butter on top of the breast.

  5. Hang the turkey on your jack.

Roast

  1. Add a little dripping to the pan for basting.

  2. Keep the turkey at a distance from the fire initially.

  3. Baste the turkey well.

  4. Roast the turkey for about 1 hour, adjusting time based on its size.

Make the gravy

  1. Stew the giblets.

  2. Season the giblets.

  3. Strain the giblets into gravy after removing excess fat.

  4. Dust the gravy with a little salt.

  5. Dredge the gravy with flour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Turkey + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together963 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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, cooking into tender meat as it roasts.
Dripping, lard, or butter
Adds fat that browns the skin and keeps the breast moist while roasting.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and holds together.

The step that matters

Keep the turkey at a distance from the fire initially. Starting with gentle heat lets the large bird cook through to the centre before the outside over-browns or dries. Basting regularly then helps the skin brown evenly.

“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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