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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey seasoned, stuffed, and roasted with butter, salt, pepper, and flour, served with a gravy made from its giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 the turkey

  1. Dress and rub the turkey inside and out with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Stuff the turkey with prepared dressing and sew up each slit with strong thread.

  3. Tie the legs firmly down.

  4. Spread the turkey with butter, pepper, and salt.

Roast and baste

  1. Place the turkey in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Add a little water to the pan.

  3. Baste often, turning the turkey to brown it on all sides.

  4. About 30 minutes before it's done, baste with butter and dredge with flour.

Make the gravy

  1. When done, pour off excess fat from the pan, add the stewed giblets and the water they were stewed in to make gravy.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

  3. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 cooking mass, and its size and thickness set how long the roast takes.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the skin brown as it cooks.
Flour
Dusted over the bird late in roasting, it helps the skin brown and thicken the drippings.
Prepared dressing
Stuffed into the cavity, it absorbs juices and adds flavor and moisture to the meat around it.

The step that matters

Baste often and turn the turkey. Basting spreads fat and juices over the skin, and turning lets all sides brown evenly. Without it the skin can dry out or brown unevenly before the inside is cooked through.

“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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