Skip to main content
Main

Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with a breadcrumb and herb dressing, basted with butter and water, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Rinse the turkey with several waters, adding baking soda to the second-to-last rinse to cleanse it.

  2. Prepare a dressing by mixing bread crumbs with butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, thyme or sweet marjoram, and optionally egg yolks, chopped sausage, or minced oysters.

  3. Stuff the turkey's cavity with the dressing and tie the neck tightly to secure it.

  4. Fill the body of the turkey with the remaining dressing and sew it up with strong thread.

Roast and baste

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Dredge the turkey with flour before roasting.

  2. Roast the turkey for about 10 minutes per pound, adjusting for the turkey's age. Place a cup of hot water in the roasting pan to steam the underside of the turkey.

  3. Baste often with a mixture of butter and water, then with the gravy from the pan.

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 + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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 + thymetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 structure and provides the bulk of the meat that cooks through.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and juices to form a moist, flavorful stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the skin brown during roasting and basting.
Flour
Dusted on the turkey to help the skin brown and crisp.
Egg yolks
Bind the dressing together and add richness when included.

The step that matters

Roast the turkey for about 10 minutes per pound. Roasting time depends on weight and age, and undercooking poultry is a food safety risk while overcooking dries the meat. Checking internal temperature with a thermometer is more reliable than time alone.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, butter, pepper, egg, oyster, 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 roast turkey recipes

or Chicken 17with Oyster Dressing 8with Chestnuts 4with Giblet Sauce 3with Gravy 3with Oysters 3 See all 259 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes