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Gravy for Roast Turkey

A savory gravy made from turkey giblets, drippings, flour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gravy for Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the giblets

  1. Boil the giblets until very tender, then chop finely.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off the fat from the roasting pan and transfer the drippings to a saucepan.

  2. In a small bowl, mix a few tablespoons of fat with 2 tablespoons of flour. Brown the mixture.

  3. Add the browned flour mixture to the drippings.

  4. Stir in the chopped giblets.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then strain before serving.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Liver + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat from roasting pan
Carries flavor and, when mixed with flour, forms the roux that thickens the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells in the hot drippings, and browning it adds nutty flavor.
Giblets
Add rich, meaty flavor and body to the gravy once chopped finely.

The step that matters

Brown the flour and fat mixture. Cooking the flour in fat until it turns golden develops nutty flavor and removes raw starch taste. Stop too early and the gravy tastes pasty; go too far and it turns bitter.

“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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