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Roast Turkey with Gravy

Roast Turkey with Gravy is a turkey roasted and served with a gravy made from its own gizzards and liver.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and liver work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Roast Turkey with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the turkey

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Baste the turkey frequently while roasting for 2.5 to 3 hours, depending on its size.

Make the gravy

  1. Once cooked, take 1 pint of gravy and stir in 1 teaspoon of flour until it thickens.

  2. Chop the cooked gizzards and liver, then mix them with the gravy.

Brown the turkey

  1. Cover the turkey with a pan until halfway through cooking, then remove the pan to allow it to brown.

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. Turkey + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Turkey + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together963 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Flour + livertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main meat, which cooks through slowly in the oven while basting keeps its surface moist.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the dish and carries the liquid base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Gizzards and liver
Adds rich, savory flavor and body to the gravy once chopped and mixed in.

The step that matters

Covering, then uncovering the turkey. The cover traps steam so the meat cooks gently and stays moist. Removing it halfway lets the dry oven heat brown the surface, so timing the uncovering matters.

“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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