Skip to main content
Main

Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey is a turkey roasted with optional stuffing of cracker, salt pork, sage, savory, egg, and optional oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Do not wash the turkey; instead, wipe it inside and out with a dry towel.

  3. If the turkey is tough, steam it for 1-2 hours before roasting.

Stuff the turkey

  1. For stuffing, mix crumbled cracker or stale bread with chopped salt pork, sage, savory, pepper, and an egg. Moisten the bread with scalding water, add butter, salt, and optional herbs.

  2. Stuff the turkey and sew it closed, securing wings and legs with skewers or string.

Roast

  1. Roast the turkey for 2.5 to 3 hours, starting slowly.

  2. Roast in a dripping pan without water, basting occasionally with seasoned water and butter.

  3. Cook until the skin is light brown and avoid burning.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

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

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, cooking through as the roasting heat penetrates it.
Egg
Binds the stuffing ingredients together so they hold their shape.
Stale bread
Absorbs the scalding water and butter, giving the stuffing a moist, soft texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the stuffing as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the stuffing and basting liquid, promoting browning on the skin.

The step that matters

Cook until the skin is light brown and avoid burning. Sugars and proteins in the skin brown through the Maillard reaction at high heat, so the skin can darken quickly. Checking color during the long roast helps prevent scorching while the inside cooks through.

Swap the marjoram

The recipe marks marjoram as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, pork, sage, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Marjoramthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, pork, sage, egg, butter, pepper. 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.

More roast turkey recipes

or Chicken 17with Oyster Dressing 8with Chestnuts 4with Giblet Sauce 3with Gravy 3with Oysters 3 See all 259 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes