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To Roast a Turkey

A roasted turkey served with gravy and bread sauce, seasoned with butter, parsley, nutmeg, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Roast a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick, draw, and singe the turkey well.

  2. Press down the breastbone and truss the turkey.

  3. Stuff the breast and sew up the neck opening.

  4. Cover the breast with a buttered sheet of parchment paper to prevent scorching.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste the turkey well with butter.

  2. Roast the turkey for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. Remove the paper shortly before finishing to allow the breast to brown.

  4. Serve with gravy and bread 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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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 bulk of the meat to be cooked and served.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches flavour and helps the skin brown as it roasts.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing, keeping it moist during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing ingredients together so they hold their shape when cooked.

The step that matters

Remove the paper shortly before finishing. The buttered paper shields the breast from scorching early on. Removing it too soon can burn the surface, while leaving it on too long stops the breast from browning, so timing matters.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, sauce, butter, meat, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, sauce, butter, meat, nutmeg, egg. 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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