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Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, thyme, and butter, served with a gravy made from its own drippings and boiled giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,193 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rinse the turkey in cold water and fill both cavities with stuffing.

  3. Break the neck and turn it into the upper cavity.

  4. Sew the openings with a large darning needle and coarse darning cotton.

  5. Tie the legs to the body.

  6. Rub the outside with pepper and flour.

  7. Place the turkey in a large dripping pan.

  8. Add water to the pan.

Roast

  1. Roast for 4-6 hours, depending on the turkey's age.

  2. Remove the cover for the last hour to brown the turkey.

  3. Halfway through cooking, place thin slices of fat salt pork on top to avoid basting.

Make the gravy

  1. Boil the heart and liver in ½ pint of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Chop the boiled heart and liver finely with the gizzard.

  3. Blend 2 tablespoons of flour with enough cold water to make a cream-like consistency.

  4. After removing the turkey, add the flour mixture and chopped giblets to the dripping pan with the cooking water and an extra cup of boiling water.

  5. Cook the mixture for a few minutes, then skim off excess fat.

Serve

  1. Serve the gravy.

  2. Garnish the turkey with celery on a large platter.

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. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Turkey + thymetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main roasted meat, and its fat and juices collect in the pan to flavor the drippings.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the cooking liquid in the stuffing, keeping it moist and giving it body.
Fat salt pork
Melts over the bird, adding fat that moistens the surface and flavors the meat.
Flour
Thickens the pan liquid into gravy as its starch swells with heat.
Gizzard, heart and liver
Simmered and chopped into the gravy, adding meaty, savory depth to the drippings.

The step that matters

Blend the flour with cold water before adding it to the hot pan liquid. Flour dropped dry or added straight into hot liquid clumps. Mixing it smooth in cold water lets the starch disperse evenly, and a few minutes of simmering lets the starch swell and thicken the gravy while cooking off the raw flour taste.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, thyme, butter, pork, liver, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, thyme, butter, pork, liver, flour. 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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