Skip to main content
Main

Roasting a Turkey

A turkey stuffed with a bread, onion, butter, parsley, and oyster mixture, roasted and served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roasting a Turkey

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dressing

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until light brown, being careful not to burn it.

  2. Mix the fried onion with the grated bread, melted butter, parsley, oysters, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stuff the turkey with the dressing and tie the wings and legs close to the body.

  4. Rub the turkey with salt and place bits of butter over it.

Roast the turkey

  1. Roast in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until slightly browned, then reduce the heat.

  2. Keep the bottom of the dripping pan covered with water to prevent burning the gravy.

  3. Baste the turkey every 10 minutes with its own drippings.

  4. Roast a 10-pound turkey for about 3 hours.

Make the gravy

  1. Boil the giblets until tender, chop finely, and return to the saucepan with the boiling water.

  2. When the turkey is done, remove it to a platter and pour off the excess fat from the pan.

  3. Mix 1 tablespoon of dry flour into the remaining fat, add giblets, and more water if necessary, along with salt and pepper.

  4. Let the mixture boil for a few minutes and serve in a gravy bowl.

  5. For added flavor, scald, skim, strain, and add the oyster liquor to the gravy while cooking.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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 (in the method)
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by roasting until browned and tender.
Stale bread
Soaks up butter and drippings, giving the dressing a soft, moist crumb.
Oysters
Add a briny, savory flavor to the dressing and gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the skin brown and the dressing taste rich.
Dry flour
Thickens the fat and drippings into a smooth gravy.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the dressing when fried until light brown.

The step that matters

Frying the onion. Onion turns bitter and acrid if it burns, and that flavor carries into the dressing. Frying gently until light brown lets its sugars caramelize into a mild, sweet base.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, parsley, oyster, pepper, 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.

More roasted turkey recipes

with Stuffing 7Poult 5with Chestnuts 4with Oysters 3 See all 122 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes