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Turkey with Truffles

A whole turkey stuffed with a mixture of truffles, bacon, spices, and bay leaf, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and truffle work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Turkey with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Clean and singe the turkey, being careful not to burst the gall bladder or intestines.

  2. Wash the inside of the turkey thoroughly if necessary.

  3. Peel and chop the truffles.

Make the truffle stuffing

  1. Mix the chopped truffles with chopped bacon, salt, pepper, spices, and bay leaf in a saucepan.

  2. Cook the mixture over low heat for 45 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Stuff the cooled mixture into the turkey.

  5. Sew the turkey closed.

  6. Let the stuffed turkey sit for several days to absorb the flavor.

Roast and serve

  1. When ready to cook, cover the turkey with bacon slices and strong paper.

  2. Roast the turkey for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the paper for the last few minutes to allow the turkey to brown before serving.

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 + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Truffle + peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,106 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 carries the stuffing and roasting juices.
Truffles
Provide the dominant aroma and earthy flavor that the whole dish is built around.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that moistens the stuffing and the roasting bird.

The step that matters

Removing the paper to brown the turkey. Browning depends on dry surface heat, so the paper must come off near the end; leaving it on steams the skin pale instead of letting Maillard browning develop.

“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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