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Roast Turkey, Chicken, Geese, and Ducks

A roasted fowl recipe using salt, pepper, flour, and a water-based gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Turkey, Chicken, Geese, and Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Dress the fowl carefully, avoiding breaking the gall.

  2. Wash the fowl thoroughly inside and out in salt water, then dry.

  3. Season the cavity well with salt and pepper.

  4. Fill the cavity with stuffing for roast veal for turkey and chicken, or use the stuffing for geese and ducks.

  5. Place the fowl in dry pans and dredge well with flour.

Roast

  1. Roast for 20 minutes, then baste frequently with hot water, turning them twice.

  2. Allow to roast for 2.5 hours.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, wash the hearts, livers, and gizzards, and place them in 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Chop the onions and add them to the saucepan with the giblets.

  3. Cook for 1 hour, then remove the giblets and save the juice.

  4. Chop the giblets finely and return them to the juice, adding the gravy from the pans.

  5. Season with pepper and salt.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Forms the main meat, which is cooked whole and becomes tender and juicy through slow roasting.
Flour
Dredging the fowl helps form a browned, slightly crisp coating on the skin.
Onions
Their sweetness and aroma flavour the giblet broth that becomes the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting and turning the fowl during roasting. Hot water basting and turning help the birds cook evenly and keep the surface from drying out, which otherwise leaves the meat dry and the skin unevenly browned.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour. 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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