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Wild Turkey

A roasted turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, pork fat, and seasonings, basted with butter and water, served with sausages, parsley, currant jelly, and cranberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 the turkey

  1. Draw and wash the turkey carefully.

  2. Wipe the cavity with a dry, soft cloth.

  3. Prepare a stuffing with bread crumbs, chopped fat pork, pepper, and salt. Moisten the stuffing with milk, then beat in the egg and melted butter.

  4. Stuff the turkey.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste the stuffed turkey with a mixture of butter and water for the first hour.

  2. Baste the turkey three or four times with gravy.

  3. Baste the turkey five or six times with melted butter.

  4. Dredge the turkey with flour before finishing.

  5. Froth the turkey with butter until golden brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Skim the gravy.

  2. Add hot water to the gravy.

  3. Add pepper to the gravy.

  4. Thicken the gravy with chopped giblets and browned flour.

Serve

  1. Serve the turkey garnished with small fried sausages and parsley.

  2. Accompany the turkey with currant jelly and 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

What each ingredient does

Wild turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to tender meat around the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and butter to form a moist, bound stuffing.
Fat pork
Adds fat and richness that keeps the stuffing and meat moist.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when roasted.
Butter
Adds fat for browning and a golden, rich crust when basted.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, deeper colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Basting the turkey through roasting. Regular basting with fat and juices keeps the surface from drying out and helps it brown evenly, so the bird stays moist while the skin turns golden.

“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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