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To Roast a Turkey

A turkey stuffed with oysters, seasoned, and roasted in a dripping pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and oyster work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 473 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

To Roast a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Joint the turkey at the first joints in the legs and trim any bloody neck.

  2. Make 12 small gashes in the fleshy parts of the turkey and press one oyster into each gash.

  3. Close the skin tightly over each oyster and stuff the turkey, leaving room for the stuffing to swell.

  4. Sew the turkey closed with a stout cord and rub lightly with flour.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the turkey and place it in a dripping pan with some water.

  2. Baste the turkey often with its own drippings and bake until golden brown.

  3. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and water, ensuring the bottom of the pan is covered with water to prevent burning.

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 + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

  2. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, providing the meat that cooks through and browns.
Oysters
Placed in gashes in the meat, where they add a briny, savoury flavour as the turkey cooks.
Flour
Rubbed on the skin to help it brown, and used to thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting and keeping water in the dripping pan. Basting with drippings keeps the surface moist and encourages even browning. Water in the pan keeps drippings from scorching, which matters because flour-thickened gravy burns easily.

“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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