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To Roast a Turkey Poult

A roasted turkey poult served with watercress and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,592 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

To Roast a Turkey Poult

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 and roast

  1. Truss the turkey poult like a capon, leaving the head on.

  2. Baste it well with good butter.

  3. Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 to 1.25 hours.

Serve

  1. For serving, place on a bed of watercress and pour a little gravy around it.

  2. Serve additional gravy in a tureen.

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

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

  2. Butter + watercresstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together842 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Turkey + watercresstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey poult
Forms the main protein, which cooks through in the oven to become tender and juicy.
Good butter
Adds fat that enriches the flavour and helps the skin brown during roasting.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the sliced meat at serving.

The step that matters

Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 to 1.25 hours. A poult is small and lean, so it can dry out quickly. Checking that the thickest part reaches a safe internal temperature without overcooking keeps the meat moist.

“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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