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Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, herbs, and optional meats, served with gravy and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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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

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 the stuffing

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

  2. Prepare the stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, herbs, eggs, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. If using, add sausage meat, ham, oysters, chestnuts, mushrooms, and truffles to the stuffing.

Roast the turkey

  1. Stuff the turkey with the mixture and place it in a roasting pan.

  2. Roast the turkey for 2.5 hours, basting frequently.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, boil the giblets in water, then chop finely.

  2. In a separate pot, combine the drippings with cold water and flour to thicken, adding the giblets.

  3. Serve the turkey with currant jelly, cranberry jelly, or cranberry sauce.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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, cooked through in the oven while its juices baste it.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and butter, giving the stuffing body and a light, soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the stuffing stay moist.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Flour
Thickens the drippings into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Roast the turkey for 2.5 hours, basting frequently.. Basting keeps the surface moist while the bird cooks, helping prevent dry meat and encouraging even browning. The stuffing must also reach a safe internal temperature, so the bird should be checked with a thermometer rather than judged by time alone.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, butter, egg, pepper, meat, ham. 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.

More roasted turkey recipes

with Stuffing 7Poult 5with Chestnuts 4with Oysters 3 See all 122 →

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