Why it works: Turkey and bread work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 822 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Roast Turkey or Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Pick and draw the fowl, then wash it well in two or three waters.
Wipe the fowl dry and dredge it with flour inside and out, adding pepper and salt.
Prepare a dressing of bread and cracker crumbs and fill the body and crop of the fowl.
Roast
Bake the fowl at 350°F (175°C) for 2 to 3 hours, basting frequently.
Make the gravy
Stew the giblets in a saucepan.
Just before serving, chop the giblets finely.
After removing the fowl, add the chopped giblets to the gravy.
Thicken the gravy with a little flour mixed with the giblet water, boil, and serve in a gravy dish.
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.
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Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together822 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,636 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Turkey + flourtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together963 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 or chicken
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to tender meat as it roasts.
- Flour
- Coats the bird and later thickens the gravy by binding with the liquid.
- Bread crumbs
- Form the dressing that soaks up juices and adds moisture and body inside the bird.
- Cracker crumbs
- Add to the dressing, helping it hold together and adding body and texture.
- Giblets
- Simmered and chopped into the gravy, adding savory depth and body.
The step that matters
Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with giblet water. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold liquid before it goes into the hot gravy, or it clumps. Boiling after adding it lets the starch swell and thicken evenly.
“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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