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Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey is a whole turkey stuffed with pork sausage meat, coated with butter and flour, and served with brown gravy and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the turkey with pork sausage meat and tie the neck skin with string.

  2. Cover the breast with a piece of buttered paper.

Roast

  1. Place the turkey on a spit, keeping it at a distance from the fire.

  2. Baste frequently with melted butter from the dripping pan and occasionally sprinkle with flour.

  3. When nearly done, remove the paper and dredge the turkey with flour.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown gravy poured over it and garnish with forcemeat balls.

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

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

  2. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 meat, whose lean flesh is the centre of the dish.
Butter
Melted butter basted over the bird adds fat, richness and golden browning.
Flour
Dredged over the turkey near the end, it helps form a browned, crisp outer crust.
Pork sausage meat
Fills the cavity, adding fat and moisture that flavour the surrounding meat.

The step that matters

Keeping the turkey at a distance from the fire. Placing the bird too close lets the outside scorch before the thick meat near the bone cooks through. A steady, moderate distance gives even heat, and frequent basting keeps the surface moist while it browns.

“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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