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Turkey Stuffed with Truffles

A turkey stuffed with truffle and bacon forcemeat, roasted and served with a truffle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turkey Stuffed with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Select a young, plump, freshly killed hen turkey.

  2. Wash the truffles thoroughly and scrub them with a soft brush.

  3. Cut 1 pound of truffles into 1.5‑inch balls.

  4. Pound the remaining truffles with the trimmings and mix them with an equal weight of pounded bacon.

  5. Season the forcemeat with salt, grated nutmeg, and pepper until smooth.

  6. Mix the truffle balls into the forcemeat and stuff the turkey.

  7. Hang the stuffed turkey for 5–6 days.

Roast and baste

  1. Before roasting, place a slice of fat bacon on the breast and cover the bacon with buttered paper.

  2. Baste the turkey liberally while roasting.

Make the truffle sauce

  1. For the truffle sauce, mince 4 truffles and sauté them in butter for 10 minutes.

  2. Add brown gravy, pepper, salt, and sherry to the sauce.

  3. Simmer the sauce for 15 minutes.

  4. Skim off the fat from the sauce 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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Turkey + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Provide the main aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture to the forcemeat and protects the breast during roasting.
Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, which the stuffing and bacon moisten.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Brown gravy
Gives the sauce its savoury body and richness.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat from the sauce before serving. Truffle sauce cooked in butter and gravy separates fat that can make it greasy and heavy on the palate. Skimming keeps the sauce smooth and the truffle flavour clean.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, turkey, pepper, butter, sauce, sherry. 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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