Skip to main content
Main

Roast Turkey

A roasted turkey served with a gravy made from its neck, heart, liver, and gizzard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turkey and cranberry work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the turkey

  1. Remove all feathers from the turkey.

  2. Singe the turkey over a burning newspaper.

  3. Carefully draw the turkey, avoiding breaking any internal organs.

  4. Remove the crop.

  5. Rinse the inside of the turkey with several waters, adding baking soda to the last rinse.

  6. Wipe the turkey dry inside and out with a clean cloth.

  7. Rub the inside of the turkey with salt.

  8. Stuff the turkey with dressing.

  9. Sew the turkey up.

  10. Tie the legs and wings to the body.

Roast

  1. Rub the outside of the turkey with soft butter.

  2. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the outside.

  3. Dredge the turkey with flour.

  4. Place the turkey in a dripping pan.

  5. Pour boiling water into the pan.

  6. Set the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  7. Baste the turkey often.

  8. Turn the turkey occasionally for even cooking.

  9. Cook the turkey for 3 to 4 hours, until the juices run clear when pierced.

Make the gravy

  1. Boil the neck, heart, liver, and gizzard in 1 pint of water until tender.

  2. Chop the heart and gizzard.

  3. Mash the liver.

  4. Return the chopped heart, gizzard, and mashed liver to the cooking liquid.

  5. Add the mixture to the drippings.

  6. Pour off excess fat.

  7. Boil the mixture for 3 minutes.

  8. Thicken the gravy with flour.

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 + cranberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pepper + cranberrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main protein, which firms and sets as it cooks through.
Soft butter
Adds fat that enriches flavour and helps the skin brown.
Flour
Dredged on the skin, it helps the surface brown and later thickens the gravy.
Baking soda
Raises the rinse water's pH, which can help the skin brown more readily.

The step that matters

Cook the turkey for 3 to 4 hours, until the juices run clear when pierced. Turkey is safely cooked only when the thickest parts reach a safe internal temperature; juices running clear is a rough sign, so a thermometer is more reliable. Undercooked poultry carries food-safety risk, while overcooking dries the meat.

Swap the cranberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, butter, pepper, flour, sauce, liver):

  1. Cranberrythe original
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, pepper, flour, sauce, 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

Turkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipesTurkey DressingTurkey Dressing24 recipesTurkey PattiesTurkey Patties12 recipes