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To Roast a Turkey

A method for roasting a plucked turkey with forcemeat stuffing, butter basting, and serving with brown gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the turkey in a cool, airy place for up to two weeks if the weather is cold.

  2. Wash and dry the turkey thoroughly with clean cloths.

  3. Fill the breast with forcemeat or highly seasoned sausage meat.

  4. Truss the turkey firmly and place it at a distance from a clear fire.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste constantly with butter while roasting for 2 to 2½ hours.

  2. Remove any covering from the breast 20 minutes before it's done.

  3. Serve with good brown gravy and well-made 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. Turkey + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Bread + chestnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together191 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main roast; its long cooking needs basting to keep the meat moist.
Forcemeat or sausage meat
Fills the breast, adding seasoning and moisture as the bird roasts.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes browning and keeps the surface from drying out.

The step that matters

Basting and removing the breast covering. Constant basting with butter keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly over the long roast. Removing the covering 20 minutes before the end lets the breast brown and crisp.

Swap the chestnut

The recipe marks chestnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, butter, bread, sauce):

  1. Chestnutthe original
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Beansfits less well
  4. Peasfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, butter, bread, sauce. 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.

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