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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey stuffed with sausage, breadcrumbs, butter, herbs, and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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

Prepare the turkey

  1. Pluck the turkey and wipe it thoroughly with a cloth.

  2. Draw the turkey, preserving the liver and gizzard without breaking the gall-bag.

  3. Wash the inside well and wipe the outside with a dry cloth.

  4. Cut off the neck close to the back, leaving enough crop-skin to turn over.

  5. Break the leg-bones close below the knee and draw out the strings from the thighs.

  6. Flatten the breast-bone to make it look plump.

Make and fill the dressing

  1. Prepare a dressing by mixing chopped sausage, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and thyme.

  2. Fill the craw and body of the turkey with the dressing and sew it up carefully.

Roast and serve

  1. Dredge the turkey with flour and place it in the oven to roast.

  2. Baste the turkey freely with butter and water, then with the gravy from the pan.

  3. Roast for about 10 minutes per pound until it is a fine brown.

  4. Serve with chopped giblets and cranberry 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. 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. Thyme + cranberrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Turkey + cranberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

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

  5. Turkey + thymetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 a browned, tender roast.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin brown when basted over the bird.
Flour
Dusted on the bird to help form a browned surface as it roasts.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and give the stuffing a soft, moist body.
Chopped sausage
Adds fat and savory flavor to the dressing as it cooks inside the bird.

The step that matters

Roast for about 10 minutes per pound until it is a fine brown. Turkey is safe and tender only when cooked through, and the timing depends on weight. Basting with butter, water and pan gravy helps the surface brown evenly while the interior cooks, so check doneness rather than relying on color alone.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Cranberrythe original
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, butter, pepper, thyme, flour, sauce. 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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