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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey roasted with a stuffing of bread crumbs, sausage, pepper, salt, butter, and flour, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare

  1. Clean and wash the turkey's crop and body with soda and water, then rinse thoroughly.

  2. Stuff the turkey with a mixture of bread crumbs, a little cooked sausage, pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little butter.

  3. Truss the turkey neatly.

  4. Place the turkey in a roasting pan and pour boiling water over it.

Roast

  1. Roast for about 10 minutes per pound, starting with a slow cook to prevent dryness.

  2. Baste the turkey often and generously.

  3. Ten minutes before removing from the oven, dredge the turkey with flour and baste with butter.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Pour off excess fat from the gravy, thicken with browned flour, season, boil once, 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the stuffing and roasting juices.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the bird and add moisture and body to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and promotes gentle browning on the skin.
Flour
Dusted on the skin to promote browning, and browned flour thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Starting the roast slowly. Roasting a large bird at high heat dries out the lean meat before the thick thighs cook through. A gentle start helps the heat reach the centre more evenly, keeping the breast moister.

“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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