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Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with a butter, thyme, and breadcrumb dressing, finished with bacon and served with cranberry jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Choose a nice fat turkey, clean and singe it, then wipe it carefully with a damp towel.

  2. Prepare the dressing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, thyme, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stuff the turkey with the dressing and tie it securely.

  4. Lard the top or lay slices of bacon over it.

  5. Wet the skin.

  6. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and flour.

  7. Allow the stuffed turkey to rest before cooking.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste the turkey often while cooking; a 10-pound turkey needs about 3.5 hours.

  2. Baste with butter and its own drippings frequently.

  3. Add more melted butter before removing from the oven.

  4. Sprinkle with flour for a crisp skin.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Boil the giblets. Chop the giblets finely. Mash the liver.

  2. After cooking, place the turkey on a hot dish.

  3. Dredge flour in the baking pan. Stir in boiling water or stock.

  4. Strain the gravy. Skim the gravy. Add giblets to the gravy.

  5. Serve with cranberry jelly.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + cranberrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Turkey + cranberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

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

  5. Turkey + thymetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 through by roasting.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the skin brown as it is basted.
Bread crumbs
Make up the dressing, absorbing juices and adding body inside the bird.
Flour
Helps the skin crisp and thickens the drippings into gravy.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor over the breast while it roasts.

The step that matters

Baste the turkey often while cooking. Basting moistens the surface with fat and drippings, helping the skin brown and reducing the chance of drying out the lean meat.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Cranberrythe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, thyme, bread, 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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