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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey roasted with fat pork, butter, and basting for a tender, browned result.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the turkey

  1. Dress, clean, stuff, and truss the turkey.

  2. Place the turkey on thin slices of fat pork in a dripping pan.

  3. Rub the turkey with coarse sea salt and sprinkle with pepper.

  4. Cream ⅓ cup butter and slowly add ¼ cup flour while stirring constantly.

  5. Spread the butter‑flour mixture over the wings, breast, and legs.

Roast and baste

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

  2. Turn the turkey to brown the back, then turn breast‑side up.

  3. Baste every ten minutes until evenly browned.

  4. Add 2 cups of water to the fat in the pan.

  5. Continue basting every fifteen minutes until tender, about 3 to 3.5 hours.

  6. For the first basting, use ½ cup melted butter in 1 cup boiling water or turkey fat.

  7. If browning too quickly, cover with buttered heavy paper, buttered side down.

Serve

  1. Remove the skewer and strings 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. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

  5. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, moist roasting.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the skin brown evenly during roasting.
Flour
Mixed with butter to form a paste that thickens drippings and aids browning.
Fat pork
Lies under the bird, releasing fat that keeps the meat moist and flavorful.

The step that matters

Basting and covering during roasting. Basting with fat and water keeps the surface moist and promotes even browning, while covering with buttered paper prevents the skin from scorching before the interior cooks through.

“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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