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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey roasted with butter, salt, pepper, and water, served with a gravy made from its giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,592 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. 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 the turkey

  1. Wash the turkey inside and out with cold water.

  2. Dry the turkey with a clean napkin.

  3. Rub the inside of the turkey with ½ tablespoon of fresh butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stuff the turkey.

  5. Sew the turkey up.

  6. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on the outside of the turkey.

  7. Place small pieces of butter on the outside of the turkey.

Roast

  1. Put the turkey in a roasting pan with ½ pint of water and 1 tablespoon of fresh butter.

  2. Roast the turkey for 1.5 hours at 400°F (200°C), basting often.

  3. Boil the giblets until soft.

  4. Cut the giblets up and mash the liver.

  5. Remove the turkey from the oven.

Make the gravy

  1. Skim off some fat from the gravy.

  2. Stir in ½ tablespoon of browned flour.

  3. Add the giblets with the cooking water.

  4. Season the gravy with salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Cook the gravy for a few minutes.

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

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

  2. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Young hen turkey
Provides the main roasting meat, whose lean and fatty parts cook together under the basting.
Fresh butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the skin brown and stay moist.
Browned flour (in the method)
Thickens the pan juices into gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Giblets
Their liver and cooking water add savoury depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the turkey while it roasts. Spooning pan juices over the bird keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly, while the fat and water in the pan protect the meat from drying out during the long roast.

“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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