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Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey is a turkey roasted with baking soda, salt, butter, flour, and boiled water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the turkey

  1. Remove all feathers from the turkey and singe it over a burning newspaper.

  2. Carefully draw the turkey, avoiding breaking any internal organs.

  3. Remove the crop and cut off the neck close to the body.

  4. Rinse the inside of the turkey with several waters, adding baking soda to the second-to-last rinse.

  5. Wipe the turkey dry inside and out with a clean cloth.

Season and stuff

  1. Rub the inside with coarse sea salt and stuff with dressing.

  2. Sew up the turkey with strong thread and tie the legs and wings to the body.

  3. Rub the turkey with soft butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dredge with flour.

Roast

  1. Place the turkey in a dripping pan, pour in boiling water, and set it in the oven.

  2. Baste the turkey often, turning it occasionally for even cooking.

  3. The turkey is done when pierced with a fork and the liquid runs out clear.

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. Butter + peppertop 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
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat that is cooked through.
Baking soda
Added to the rinse water to help clean the inside of the bird.
Soft butter
Coats the skin to add fat, helping it brown and stay moist during roasting.
Flour
Dredged over the buttered skin, helping it brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Judging doneness with a fork. A turkey can look browned while the thickest parts, especially the thigh and the area near the bone, are still underdone. Piercing the meat and checking that the juices run clear shows whether the inside has cooked through, which matters for food safety.

“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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