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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey roasted with a buttered breadcrumb stuffing, basted in boiling water, served with a gravy made from the giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Rinse the turkey well with soda and water, then with salt, and finally with clean water.

  2. Prepare a stuffing with bread crumbs, wet with butter and water, and season to taste.

  3. Stuff the turkey's body and neck, then sew up the vent and tie the legs to the body.

  4. Boil the giblets in a little water until tender.

Roast

  1. Place the turkey in a roasting pan and pour ½ cup of boiling water over it.

  2. Roast the turkey, basting often, allowing about 10 minutes per pound.

  3. Keep the oven at 400°F (200°C) for the first half-hour to prevent drying out.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Once the turkey is done, keep it warm and skim the gravy from the pan.

  2. Add a little boiling water to the gravy, thicken with browned flour, and add minced giblets.

  3. Season to taste, boil once more, and serve in a gravy boat.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main roasted meat, which cooks through slowly while basting keeps the surface moist.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and water to make a moist stuffing that holds its shape inside the bird.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the stuffing and skin brown.
Browned flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy, giving it body as the starch swells in the pan juices.
Giblets
Simmered and minced into the gravy, adding savoury meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the oven at 400°F for the first half-hour. A hot start helps the outside of the turkey brown and seal, which limits moisture loss while the thick meat cooks through. Basting adds moisture during roasting.

“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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