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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey prepared by cleaning, seasoning, stuffing, and roasting until golden brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bird

  1. Remove the vent and cut a slit in the breast bone to take out the entrails, avoiding the gall on the liver.

  2. Remove the feet and bruise the bone near the foot; draw out the string from the leg.

  3. Cut a slit in the back of the neck, draw out the crop, and cut the neck short, leaving enough skin to fasten over the back.

  4. Wash the inside with cold water and wipe it dry.

  5. Mix salt and pepper; rub the inside and the crop area with this mixture.

Stuff and truss

  1. Prepare stuffing with bread, salt, pepper, butter, cinnamon or nutmeg, lemon peel, parsley, and thyme; mix with beaten eggs.

  2. Stuff the body and breast, sew them closed, and fill the crop.

  3. Draw the neck skin over the back and fasten with a skewer; turn the legs close to the body and skewer the hip joints, tying the legs together.

Roast and make gravy

  1. Roast the turkey until golden brown, basting frequently with the pan juices. It will take about 1.5 hours, or 2 hours for larger, older turkeys.

  2. Make gravy from drawn butter and the drippings.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 and cooks to tender meat that carries the stuffing and gravy.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when cooked inside the bird.
Bread
Absorbs the seasonings and butter, giving the stuffing body and soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and the drawn butter for the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the turkey while it roasts. Basting with pan juices moistens the surface and encourages even golden browning, while the skin and meat dry out if the bird is left unbasted.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pepper, egg, bread, butter, lemon, parsley. 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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