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Roast Turkey

Roast turkey seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, cooked in a hot oven and basted with pan juices, served with homemade gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Dress, wash, stuff, and truss the turkey.

  2. Rub the entire surface with coarse sea salt, sprinkle with pepper and flour.

Roast

  1. Place in a covered roaster in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C).

  2. When the skin begins to brown, reduce the heat and add 1 cup of hot water to the fat in the pan.

  3. Baste every 15 minutes with the liquid in the pan.

  4. Turn the turkey often to ensure even browning.

  5. If it browns too fast, cover with oiled paper and a damp cloth.

  6. Remove string and skewers before serving.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, brown 1 tablespoon of flour in the turkey fat.

  2. Gradually add 3 cups of stock, season with ¼ teaspoon salt and ⅛ teaspoon pepper, and boil for five minutes.

  3. Strain the gravy before serving.

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 + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turkey + ricetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

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

  5. 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

Flour
Coats the skin and later thickens the gravy, helping it brown and become smooth.
Turkey fat
Carries heat and browns the skin while flavouring the pan drippings used for gravy.
Stock from giblets
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, adding savoury flavour and body.

The step that matters

Browning the skin and basting. Browning too fast can leave the skin dark while the meat is still underdone. Covering with oiled paper and basting with pan liquid controls surface colour and keeps the meat moist as it cooks.

“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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