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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey stuffed with a bread and butter mixture, roasted slowly and served with a sauce made from its drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and cranberry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 69 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Wash the turkey inside and out, ensuring all pin-feathers are removed.

  2. Singe off any fine feathers with a flame, then wash again.

  3. In a bowl, combine the bread, salt, black pepper, butter, and lard. Pour in enough warm water to form a dough.

  4. Scald the turkey in a pot, then place it on a tray and fill it with the dressing.

  5. Sew the opening closed with a kitchen needle.

Roast

  1. Grease the turkey with lard and place it in front of the fire to cook slowly.

  2. Baste it with the drippings and turn it often.

  3. When it starts to brown, cook a little faster.

  4. Keep the turkey warm by placing it over a pan of boiling water.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Once cooked, pour the drippings into a saucepan.

  2. Stir in water and browned flour, mixing well with the drippings.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Serve the turkey on a large dish with the sauce in a sauce tureen.

  5. Remember to remove the string used to sew the stuffing before serving.

  6. Serve with 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Bread + cranberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,001 recipes

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

  4. Turkey + cranberrytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together97 recipes

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

  5. Turkey + breadtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, carrying the dressing and cooking to tenderness over slow heat.
Bread
Soaks up butter and moisture to form a soft, tender dressing that holds the stuffing together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the dressing and skin stay moist.
Lard
Adds fat that helps the skin brown and keeps the dressing and bird from drying out.
Browned flour
Thickens the drippings into gravy and adds a toasted, deeper colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Cook slowly, then speed up only when browning starts. Low, gentle heat lets the thick meat and dressing cook through evenly, while a brief increase in heat at the end browns the skin. Rushing the start can leave the centre undercooked or the outside dry.

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, pepper, butter, flour, oyster, cranberry):

  1. Sagebetter flavor fit
  2. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Parsleyabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, pepper, butter, flour, oyster, cranberry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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