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Turkey, with Truffles

A whole turkey stuffed with truffles and bacon, seasoned with salt, pepper, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and truffle work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Turkey, with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Empty the turkey and fill the cavity with coarse sea salt to draw out the blood.

  2. Let the turkey cool.

Make the truffle stuffing

  1. Peel the truffles and check for good flavor, discarding any musty ones.

  2. Chop the smallest truffles very fine.

  3. Rasp enough fat white bacon to fill the turkey's cavity.

  4. In a mortar, pound the chopped truffles with the rasped bacon, seasoning well with salt, pepper, and spices.

  5. Mix this with the larger truffles and stuff the mixture into the turkey.

  6. Sew the turkey up and let it sit for 2-3 days to absorb the truffle flavor.

Roast and serve

  1. When ready to roast, place the turkey on a spit, cover the breast with bacon and white paper.

  2. Carefully remove the paper before serving to keep the truffles intact.

  3. Serve with a clear Spanish 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. Turkey + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Truffle + peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,106 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Provide the dominant aroma and flavor that the turkey absorbs during resting.
Fat white bacon
Adds fat and moisture to the stuffing and protects the breast during roasting.
Fat turkey
Forms the main body that carries the stuffing and gives the dish its bulk.

The step that matters

Sew the turkey up and let it sit for 2-3 days. Truffle aroma is volatile and absorbs slowly into the surrounding meat, so the resting period needs to be long enough for the flavor to penetrate. Keeping the cavity sealed prevents the aroma from escaping.

“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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