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Roast Turkey

A turkey stuffed with sausage meat, wrapped in flannel cloth, basted with butter, roasted, and served with gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Wrap the turkey in a flannel cloth to make it look white.

  2. Remove the sinews from the legs before roasting.

  3. Mix bread crumbs and a beaten egg into the sausage meat for improvement.

  4. Stuff the turkey with sausage meat and twist the head under the wing.

  5. Place a small strip of paper on the breastbone to prevent scorching.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste the turkey with butter and roast it well.

  2. Serve with gravy in the dish and bread sauce 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Is the main cooked meat, carrying the dish's flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, helping the skin brown and stay moist.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs and sausage meat together in the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and give the sausage stuffing body and structure.
Sausage meat
Forms the stuffing, adding richness and savoury flavour inside the bird.

The step that matters

Place a small strip of paper on the breastbone to prevent scorching.. The thin breast meat and skin brown faster than the rest of the bird, so a protective covering stops it burning while the legs and thighs finish cooking.

“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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