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Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with a cracker and herb dressing, served with a gravy made from its organs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Make a dressing by mixing crackers, pepper, salt, sage, summer savory, parsley, eggs, and enough cold water to moisten.

  2. Stuff the turkey with the dressing, filling the breast first and then the body.

  3. Tie the legs tightly.

  4. Skewer the wings to the body.

  5. Secure the neck with a skewer.

  6. Rub the turkey with salt.

  7. Place the turkey on a spit or in a roasting pan.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste often with drippings and flour.

  2. Occasionally baste with butter.

  3. About 15 minutes before serving, baste with butter.

  4. Sprinkle with flour for a frothy appearance.

  5. Roast for 1 hour and 45 minutes if using a tin kitchen, or 1 hour and 30 minutes plus 15 minutes for each additional pound in the oven.

Make the gravy

  1. Boil the heart, gizzard, liver, and neck in 2 quarts of water for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the organs.

  3. Chop the gizzard and heart.

  4. Braid the liver.

  5. Return the organs to the pot.

  6. Thicken the gravy with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with cold water.

  7. Season the gravy with salt and pepper.

  8. Simmer the gravy for an additional hour.

  9. Add the turkey drippings to the gravy.

  10. Boil the gravy once.

  11. Serve.

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. Sage + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Summer savory + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dressing so it holds together when stuffed and roasted.
Crackers
Provide bulk and absorb moisture to form the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and, sprinkled on the skin, helps create a golden, frothy surface.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the skin brown as it is basted.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with cold water. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules swell unevenly. Mixing it with cold water first disperses the starch so the gravy thickens smoothly.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sage, summer savory, egg, butter, flour, turkey. 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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