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Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey is a poultry dish prepared by stuffing, seasoning, and baking a turkey with salt pork and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 375°F (190°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare and stuff the turkey as you would for roast chicken.

  2. Lay a thin piece of salt pork across the breast and tie it in place with twine.

  3. Sprinkle the turkey with salt and pepper.

Roast and brown

  1. Place the turkey in a 375°F (190°C) oven.

  2. Baste the turkey every 10 minutes, turning it occasionally to ensure even cooking.

  3. Cook for 20 minutes per pound plus an additional 20 minutes.

  4. In the last third of the cooking time, withdraw the pan slightly from the oven.

  5. Dredge the breast and sides with flour using a fine sifter.

  6. Return the pan to the oven and let it brown the flour.

  7. Baste with drippings and repeat the flouring and browning process 3 to 4 times.

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 + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 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. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turkey + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together963 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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, cooked whole so the meat stays moist through roasting.
Salt pork
Lays fat over the lean breast, basting the meat as it melts during roasting.
Flour
Dusted on the breast and sides, it browns in the oven to build a golden, crisp coating.

The step that matters

Flouring and browning the breast. Flour applied to a wet or hot surface can clump or burn, so it must be dusted evenly and browned gently. Repeating the basting and flouring builds a crisp, even crust.

“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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