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Turkey and Truffles

A roasted turkey served with a sauce made from truffles, stock, cuilis, citrus juice, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 and Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Two days before cooking, draw the turkey.

  2. Stuff the turkey with green unprepared truffles.

  3. Tie the neck and vent the turkey.

  4. Hang the turkey until ready to cook.

Prepare the truffles

  1. Remove the truffles.

  2. Clean the truffles with a hard brush.

  3. Trim the truffles into a round shape.

  4. Pound the trimmings in a mortar.

  5. Mix the trimmings into the forcemeat to fill the cavity near the breast.

Roast and make the sauce

  1. Roast the turkey as usual.

  2. Gently stew the prepared truffles in good stock or gravy.

  3. Skim the stew well.

  4. Add seasoned cuilis, a little Seville orange or lemon juice, sugar, and brandy when the liquid is nearly reduced.

  5. Serve the truffle sauce around the turkey.

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. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Turkey + orangetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Turkey
Forms the main roasted dish, carrying the stuffing and absorbing the flavour of the truffles.
Green unpared truffles
Provide the strong, earthy aroma that defines the dish and flavour the stew and stuffing.
Good stock or gravy
Serves as the liquid base in which the truffles stew, becoming the body of the sauce.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic note to the sauce as it reduces.
Seville orange or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Skim the stew well. Skimming removes fat and impurities that rise to the surface of the simmering stock, keeping the sauce clear and clean-tasting rather than greasy.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, truffle, sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Currantfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, truffle, sugar, brandy. 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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