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Wild Turkey

A roasted wild turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, pork fat, and spices, served with gravy, currant jelly, and cranberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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. Wipe the cavity with a dry soft cloth.

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

  3. Stuff the turkey with the mixture.

Roast

  1. Baste with butter and water for the first hour.

  2. Baste three to four times with gravy, then five to six times with melted butter.

  3. Dredge the turkey with flour before finishing.

  4. Froth with butter and roast until golden brown.

Make the gravy and serve

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

  2. Boil the gravy and pour it into a tureen.

  3. Garnish the turkey with whole giblets under each wing, small fried sausages, and crispy parsley.

  4. Serve 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, cooked whole and carved for serving.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and butter to form a moist, binding stuffing.
Fat pork
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich during roasting.
Egg
Binds the stuffing together so it holds its shape.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the skin turn golden brown.
Flour
Dredged over the turkey and browned to help thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting during the roast. Basting spreads fat and liquid over the skin, keeping the lean meat moist and helping the skin brown evenly. Skipping or delaying it can leave the bird dry.

“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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