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Roast Turkey

A whole turkey stuffed with a bread crumb mixture and roasted with water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dressing

  1. Soak the bread in cold water until soft, then press dry and crumble it.

  2. Mix the bread crumbs with salt pork, onion, butter, pepper, salt, sage, and thyme. Add marjoram and parsley if desired.

Stuff and truss the turkey

  1. Wash the turkey and dry the inside with a cloth.

  2. Fill it with the dressing and sew up the openings. Tie the wings and legs close to the body and tuck the neck under the wing.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the turkey in a roasting pan with ½ inch of water and bake at 300°F (150°C). Baste frequently with drippings, adding more hot water as needed.

  2. In the last 30 minutes, baste with 1 tablespoon of salt dissolved in 1 pint of hot water.

  3. Boil the giblets in water until very tender.

  4. Serve with cranberry jelly or 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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

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

  4. Turkey + sagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Is the main cooked meat, and its size sets the roasting time.
Bread
Soaked and crumbled, it forms the body of the dressing and holds moisture inside the bird.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the dressing as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing.
Sage
Adds a distinct aromatic, earthy flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Baste with drippings and salt water near the end. Regular basting moistens the surface as it roasts, while the late salt-water basting seasons the skin and helps it brown and stay juicy. Too little basting can leave the bird dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, pork, butter, egg, pepper, sage. 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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