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Baked Turkey

A method for preparing a whole turkey by rinsing, seasoning, stuffing, and baking with butter or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 263 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the turkey

  1. Rinse the turkey inside and out in cold water, changing the water three to four times.

  2. In the last rinse, dissolve 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, fill the turkey with this water, shake, pour off, and rinse with fresh water.

  3. Dry the turkey inside and out, then rub the inside with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Stuff and truss

  1. Mix enough grated bread crumbs with ½ teaspoon pepper, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon summer savory (or thyme or sage), and enough butter or drippings to moisten the mixture.

  2. Stuff the turkey and tie the neck tightly.

  3. Sew up the incision, tie down the wings and legs, and place the turkey on its back in a baking pan.

Bake and baste

  1. Wet the skin, season with pepper and coarse sea salt, and dredge with flour.

  2. Place small pieces of butter on top and add 1 pint of boiling stock or ½ cup of butter to the pan.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until rich brown, basting every 10 minutes.

  4. If browning too quickly, cover with a sheet of white paper.

  5. Once browned on the breast, turn the turkey over in the pan and season the back with pepper, salt, and flour.

  6. Continue baking until browned, basting as before.

  7. When done, remove the strings from the neck and body.

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. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Is the main cooked mass; its skin browns and its meat cooks through during baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter or drippings in the stuffing, keeping the filling moist and lightly textured.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches flavour and helps the skin brown richly.
Flour
Dredged on the skin, it helps form a crisp, deeply browned surface.

The step that matters

Basting and browning control. Basting every 10 minutes with fat and stock keeps the skin moist while it browns. Covering with paper if it darkens too fast prevents scorching before the thick meat cooks through.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Summer savorythe original

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