Name: Wild Turkey
Ingredients: 2 cups stale bread; ½ pound salt pork, chopped fine; 1 teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon pepper; ½ cup water; melted butter for basting

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Wild Turkey

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Mix stale bread, chopped salt pork, salt, and pepper to make stuffing.
Stuff the body of the turkey with the mixture and truss it.
Place the turkey in a baking pan and cover the breast with thin slices of fat pork.

Roast and baste

Add water to the pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes per pound.
After one hour, reduce the oven temperature slightly.
Add 1 teaspoon of salt to the pan.
Baste with melted butter every 10 minutes initially.
Baste with its own gravy.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,371 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 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

Stale bread: Forms the body of the stuffing and absorbs the pork fat and seasonings.
Salt pork: Adds fat and savory flavor to the stuffing and, as slices, to the breast.
Melted butter: Adds fat for basting, promoting browning and a richer surface color.

“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.