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Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey is a roasted poultry dish prepared with butter, flour, stock, and seasonings, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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

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

  2. Clean and singe the turkey, then chop off the claws.

  3. Dip the feet in boiling water.

Make the gravy base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, stir in the flour, and cook for a minute.

  2. Add the stock, salt, and pepper, and let it boil for two minutes.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste the turkey with the natural gravy every 15 minutes during roasting.

  2. Roast the turkey for 15 minutes per pound plus an additional 15 minutes.

  3. Once done, place the turkey on a hot platter and sprinkle with salt.

  4. Pour out the grease from the pan and add the stock to brown it.

  5. Serve the sauce in a sauce boat with the roast.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Turkey + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together248 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and stock into a smooth sauce base.
Second stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce and, added to the pan, lifts browned drippings into the gravy.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich.
Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and absorb fat and liquid to give the stuffing body.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.

The step that matters

Pour out the grease from the pan and add the stock to brown it. Removing most of the rendered fat keeps the gravy from tasting greasy, while the stock dissolves the browned pan drippings that give the sauce its colour and flavour.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, flour, pepper, beef, bread, egg. 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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