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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey stuffed with a breadcrumb and herb dressing, roasted with butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rinse the turkey thoroughly with water, using baking soda in the last rinse to cleanse.

  2. Prepare the dressing by mixing bread crumbs with butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, thyme or sweet marjoram, and optionally add egg yolks, chopped sausage, or minced oysters.

  3. Stuff the turkey with the dressing and tie the neck tightly to secure it.

  4. Fill the body of the turkey with the remaining dressing and sew it up with strong thread.

Roast and baste

  1. Dredge the turkey with flour before roasting and baste often with butter and water, then with gravy from the pan.

  2. Place a cup of hot water in the roasting pan to steam the underside of the turkey and prevent the skin from drying out.

  3. Roast the turkey for about 10 minutes per pound in a brisk fire, adjusting for the turkey's age.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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 + thymetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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 its skin browns and crisps during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing and bastes the skin for browning.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the dressing, absorbing moisture and fat to stay tender.
Flour
Dredged over the bird to help the skin brown and crisp in the oven.
Egg yolks
Bind the dressing together and add richness when included.

The step that matters

Adjusting the roasting time for the turkey's age. Roasting time per pound varies with the bird's age and size, so using a fixed time can leave the meat undercooked or dry. Checking the internal temperature of the thickest part of the meat is the reliable way to know it is done.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, butter, pepper, egg, oyster, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, butter, pepper, egg, oyster, 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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