Name: Turkey Larded
Ingredients: 1 whole turkey; good white stuffing; sheets of fat bacon; 3 sheets of white paper; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); ragoût of livers, combs, mushrooms, and sweetbreads

Why it works: Turkey and mushroom work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 205 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Turkey Larded

Ingredients

1 whole turkey
good white stuffing
sheets of fat bacon
3 sheets of white paper
coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')
ragoût of livers, combs, mushrooms, and sweetbreads

Directions

Prepare the turkey

Lard the turkey thickly, especially on the breast.
Stuff the crop with good white stuffing.
Place the turkey on a spit.
Cover the turkey with sheets of fat bacon.
Cover the turkey with white paper.
Tie the paper loosely over the breast.

Roast and serve

Roast for about 1 hour, longer if the turkey is larger.
Serve with a ragoût of livers, combs, mushrooms, and sweetbreads on the dish.
Place the turkey on top.

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.

Turkey + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together205 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Turkey + livertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together190 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Liver + mushroomtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together572 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey: Forms the main body of the dish, and its size sets how long it needs to roast.
Sheets of fat bacon: Lays fat over the bird, adding moisture and flavour as it roasts.
Ragoût of livers, combs, mushrooms, and sweetbreads: Serves as the rich accompaniment spooned onto the dish beneath the turkey.

“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.