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Wild Turkey Plain

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Plain

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash and wipe the turkey carefully, and dry the cavity with a soft cloth before stuffing.

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

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

  4. Stuff the turkey and baste it with a mixture of butter and water for the first hour.

  5. Baste three or four times with gravy, then five or six times with melted butter.

  6. Dredge the turkey with flour when it is nicely browned.

  7. Skim the gravy, add hot water and pepper, then thicken with chopped giblets and browned flour.

  8. Boil the gravy and pour it into a tureen, or place giblets under each wing when serving.

  9. Garnish with sliced lemon and parsley, and serve with currant jelly or cranberry 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. 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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