Skip to main content
Main

Turkey for Roasting

A whole turkey roasted in the oven, basted with butter or oil, until golden brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Turkey for Roasting

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

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Carefully pick the turkey, removing all feathers and singeing any hair with white paper.

  3. Draw the turkey without breaking the gall-bag to avoid bitterness.

Roast

  1. Place the turkey in the oven and roast, basting continually for a fine color.

  2. Roast for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole turkey
Provides the main meat, which cooks through over the long roast.
Butter or oil
Basting fat carries heat to the skin and helps it brown evenly.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the skin and helps it brown and crisp as it roasts.

The step that matters

Draw the turkey without breaking the gall-bag. The gall bladder sits near the liver; if it bursts, its bitter fluid can spread onto the meat and taint the flavor. Removing it intact keeps the bird tasting clean.

“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.

More roasted turkey recipes

with Stuffing 7Poult 5with Chestnuts 4with Oysters 3 See all 122 →

You might also like

Turkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipesTurkey DressingTurkey Dressing24 recipesTurkey PattiesTurkey Patties12 recipes