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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, marjoram, butter, and egg, roasted and basted, served with a gravy made from its own drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Soak the turkey in cold water for one hour, if possible.

  2. Clean the gizzards, liver, heart, and neck thoroughly.

  3. Dry the turkey inside and out.

  4. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, salt, marjoram, butter, and egg until well combined.

  5. Cut the skin at the back of the neck and fill the breast with the stuffing.

  6. Sew the breast up.

  7. If there's extra stuffing, place it inside the body and skewer the vent.

  8. Tie the legs tightly and skewer the wings to the sides.

  9. Turn the neck back onto the back with a strong skewer.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste the turkey with salt and water once.

  2. Frequently baste with butter.

  3. Fifteen minutes before serving, dredge with salt and flour.

  4. Baste with butter again for a frothy appearance.

  5. Roast the turkey for 12 minutes per pound; a 10-pound turkey takes about 2 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, boil the gizzard, neck, and liver in a quart of water with pepper, salt, and mace until reduced to half a pint.

  2. Finely chop the liver and return it to the broth.

  3. Add turkey drippings and a little flour, stirring constantly until it boils.

  4. Serve the gizzard with the turkey.

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. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Marjoram + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together767 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the main body of the dish; its skin browns and its meat cooks through during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and butter in the stuffing, giving it a soft, cohesive texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, promoting browning and a golden skin when basted over the bird.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when filled into the breast.
Sweet marjoram
Adds a mild, aromatic herbal flavor to the stuffing.
Flour
Dredged over the turkey and whisked into drippings to thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the turkey with butter. Butter brushed over the skin adds fat that helps it brown and stay moist, while frequent basting keeps the surface from drying out during long roasting.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, marjoram, butter, egg, flour, 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.

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