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Wild Turkey

Roasted wild turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, pork fat, pepper, salt, milk, egg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw and wash the turkey's inside carefully, then wipe the cavity with a dry soft cloth.

  2. Prepare a stuffing with bread crumbs, fat pork, pepper, and salt.

Stuff and roast

  1. Moisten the stuffing with milk, then beat in the egg and melted butter.

  2. Stuff the turkey and roast it, basting with butter and water for the first hour.

  3. Baste three or four times with gravy.

  4. Baste five or six times with melted butter.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so its meat becomes tender and juicy as it roasts.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and butter, giving the stuffing body and holding moisture inside the bird.
Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing and surrounding meat moist and adds savory flavor.
Egg
Binds the moistened stuffing together so it holds its shape when cooked.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs so the stuffing is soft rather than dry.

The step that matters

Basting during roasting. Basting with butter, water, and gravy keeps the surface from drying out and encourages even browning. Wild turkey is lean, so skipping or delaying basting risks dry meat.

“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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