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Turkey or Brant Roasted

A roasted turkey or brant stuffed with salt pork and basted with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Turkey or Brant Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and wash the turkey or brant thoroughly, wiping the inside carefully.

  2. Prepare stuffing using chopped salt pork as for tame turkey.

  3. Cover the bird with slices of salt pork.

Roast and serve

  1. In the pan, add ½ cup of butter to the gravy and baste the bird often, as the meat tends to be dry.

  2. Serve with cranberry sauce or currant jelly.

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. Turkey + cranberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cranberrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey or brant
Main protein; its lean meat is what the basting is meant to keep moist.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stuffing and the bird's covering.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan gravy used for basting the meat.

The step that matters

Basting the bird often. Lean game birds dry out in the oven, and regular basting with butter-enriched pan juices keeps the surface moist and adds flavor.

Swap the cranberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, pork, butter, pepper):

  1. Cranberrythe original
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pork, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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