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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey seasoned with salt, pepper, sage, and a breadcrumb butter dressing, roasted with water and butter, served with a giblet gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Rub the inside of the turkey with coarse sea salt.

  2. Fill the turkey with the dressing made from soaked bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and sage.

  3. Sew up and truss the turkey.

Roast

  1. Place the turkey in a roasting pan with water and a large piece of butter.

  2. Sprinkle the turkey with pepper and salt.

  3. Add a few bits of butter or thin slices of fat salt pork.

  4. Baste the turkey often until nearly done.

  5. Bake the turkey until tender and rich brown.

Make the gravy

  1. In a small saucepan, cook the chopped giblets until tender.

  2. Add the giblets to the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with wetted flour.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Turkey + sagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  5. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

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, cooking to tender meat as it roasts.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the skin and surface brown during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bulk out the dressing that is stuffed into the bird.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a gravy when mixed with liquid.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that bastes the bird and contributes savoury flavour as it melts.

The step that matters

Baste the turkey often until nearly done. Regular basting spreads melted fat and pan juices over the surface, keeping it moist and promoting an even, rich brown colour as the skin dries in the oven heat.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Sagethe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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