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Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey with cracker stuffing, heart, liver, and gizzard gravy, served with cranberry jelly and oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Clean and singe the turkey with a lighted newspaper.

  2. Prepare stuffing by mixing pounded crackers, salt, pepper, butter, egg whites, sage, and marjoram.

  3. Fill the turkey with the stuffing and sew it up tightly.

  4. Rub the turkey with salt and flour.

  5. Pour ½ pint of water into the roasting pan and place the turkey inside.

  6. Tie the wings and legs tightly to the body.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast the turkey gradually, basting constantly with flour and water for about four hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Boil the heart, liver, and gizzard in a little water until tender.

  2. Mash the liver and slice the heart and gizzard thinly.

  3. Add the mashed liver and sliced heart and gizzard to the gravy in a saucepan, thicken with flour, and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Serve the turkey with cranberry jelly and oyster sauce.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, providing the meat that is roasted and served.
Pounded crackers
Bind the stuffing and soak up butter and juices, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it cooks.
Egg whites
Help bind the stuffing together as they set during roasting.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and helps the basting liquid brown the turkey skin.
Sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic herb flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Roasting gradually and basting constantly. Slow, steady roasting cooks the stuffed bird through without drying the meat, while frequent basting keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the marjoram

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Marjoramthe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pepper, butter, egg, sage, flour, liver. 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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