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Turkey with Truffles

Turkey stuffed with truffles, bacon, spices, and bay leaf, then left to absorb flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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.

  2. If the gall bladder or intestines burst, wash the inside of the turkey carefully.

Make the truffle filling

  1. Peel and chop the truffles and mix with chopped bacon in a saucepan.

  2. Add salt, pepper, spices, and bay leaf; cook over low heat for 45 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat, stir, and let cool completely.

Stuff and rest

  1. Stuff the cooled mixture into the turkey, sew up the opening, and let it sit for several days to absorb the truffle flavor.

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

Truffles
Provide the main aroma and flavour that the turkey absorbs during resting.
Fat turkey
Forms the main body of the dish and holds the filling inside.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the filling moist as it cooks.

The step that matters

Let the cooled filling cool completely before stuffing. Stuffing hot filling into the turkey can hold heat in the bird and encourage bacteria to grow. Cooling it fully first keeps the filling safer while the turkey rests for several days.

“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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