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Turkey, Roast

A roasted turkey served hot with lemon, sausages, and watercress garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Turkey, Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Pluck, draw, singe, and truss the turkey.

  2. Tie a buttered paper over the breast.

Roast and baste

  1. Hang the bird before a clear fire and baste frequently.

  2. A quarter of an hour before removing, take off the paper, dredge flour over the breast, and baste with cold butter.

  3. Let it brown brightly.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with lemon and sausages, or forcemeat balls.

  2. Serve very hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turkey + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together464 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
Is the main cooked protein, and its meat sets the structure of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the breast brown and stay moist while basting.
Flour
Dredged over the breast, it helps form a golden, crisp browned crust.

The step that matters

Dredging with flour and basting with cold butter before the end. Flour and butter on the breast brown the skin as the bird finishes. Timing matters: added too early they can burn, and too late the skin will not colour well.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, 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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