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Larded Turkey

A turkey stuffed with fat salt pork, covered in oiled paper, roasted and served with watercress salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Larded Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dress and truss the turkey with strings.

  2. Lard the turkey with fat salt pork.

  3. Cover the larded parts with oiled or buttered paper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the turkey, removing the paper just before it's done to allow the lardoons to brown.

  2. Serve the turkey garnished with watercresses dressed with plain French salad dressing.

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

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

  2. Pork + watercresstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Turkey + watercresstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Young turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked as the central protein.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and moisture to the lean meat, and its lardoons brown during roasting.

The step that matters

Removing the paper before the turkey is done. The paper shields the larded parts while the bird cooks. Removing it only near the end lets the pork fat brown and crisp; removing it too early dries the surface, and leaving it on too long prevents browning.

“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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