Skip to main content
Main

Roast Turkey

A stuffed turkey roasted on a spit, basted with butter and flour, served with giblet gravy and cranberry sauce.

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

Why it works: Sage and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a dressing with the crackers, pepper, salt, sage, summer savory, parsley, eggs, butter, and enough cold water to moisten.

  2. Stuff the turkey, starting with the breast, then fill the body.

  3. Cross and tie the legs tightly, skewer the wings to the body, and secure the neck under the body with a skewer.

  4. Rub the turkey with salt and place it on a spit.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste often with drippings and flour, and occasionally with butter.

  2. About 15 minutes before serving, baste with butter and dredge with flour for a frothy appearance.

  3. Roast for 1 hour and 45 minutes for an 8-pound turkey in a tin kitchen, or 1 hour and 30 minutes plus 15 minutes for each additional pound in the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve with giblet gravy and 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. Sage + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 recipes

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

  2. Summer savory + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 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

Eggs
Bind the dressing so it holds together when stuffed and roasted.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the skin brown as it bastes.
Flour
Dredging creates a light crust that browns and gives a frothy surface.
Pounded crackers
Bulk the dressing and soak up moisture from the stuffing.

The step that matters

Basting the turkey with drippings, flour and butter. Basting spreads fat and drippings over the skin, promoting even browning and moisture. Flour dredging forms a crust that browns, so timing matters for appearance.

Swap the summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sage, parsley, egg, butter, flour, liver):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Summer savorythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sage, parsley, egg, butter, flour, liver. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes