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To Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey prepared with butter, suet, egg, optional sauces, and stuffing, 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 ↓

To Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the sinews from the turkey legs.

  2. Twist the head under the wing.

  3. Prepare a stuffing of sausage meat or bread stuffing.

Cook

  1. Cover the turkey with a floured cloth and boil to make it white.

  2. Baste the turkey well while roasting.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy and plenty of 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 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. Butter + oystertop 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

Young hen turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is cooked and served.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the skin brown and stay moist during roasting.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist and richer in flavour as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.

The step that matters

Baste the turkey well while roasting. Spooning fat over the bird keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly, while reducing the chance of dry meat.

“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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