Skip to main content
Main

Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, oysters, and butter, served with gravy and fried oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the turkey

  1. Wash the turkey thoroughly, optionally using baking soda, and drain well.

  2. Stuff the body and crop with the bread crumbs, oysters, salt, pepper, and melted butter.

  3. Place the turkey on a gridiron over a dripping pan with ½ cup of water.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes per pound for a young turkey.

  2. Cook the giblets in enough water to cover them until 15 minutes before serving.

  3. Chop the giblets and add them to the water they were boiled in.

  4. After removing the turkey, place the dripping pan on the stove, add the giblet mixture, and stir in the scorched flour to thicken the gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve the gravy in a boat alongside the turkey.

  2. Garnish the platter with fried oysters and serve with cranberry 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Turkey + cranberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cranberrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, cooked by dry heat in the oven until done.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing and are also served fried as a garnish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and juices in the stuffing, giving it a soft, moist texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that moistens the stuffing and helps the bird brown.
Scorched flour
Thickens the giblet liquid into a gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Baking the turkey at 400°F. A young turkey is roasted by time per pound at high heat, so it can dry out or stay underdone if timed poorly. Checking doneness in the thickest part of the meat with a thermometer helps prevent both problems.

Swap the cranberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, oyster, pepper, egg, butter, flour):

  1. Cranberrythe original
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, oyster, pepper, egg, butter, flour. 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.

More roast turkey recipes

or Chicken 17with Oyster Dressing 8with Chestnuts 4with Giblet Sauce 3with Gravy 3with Oysters 3 See all 259 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes