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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) · 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, ensuring not to burst the gallbladder or intestines. Wash the inside carefully if needed.

Make the truffle filling

  1. Peel the truffles and chop a handful of bacon. Place them in a saucepan with the whole truffles, salt, pepper, spices, and bay leaf.

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

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

Stuff and rest

  1. Once cooled, stuff the mixture into the turkey, sew up the opening, and let it sit for several days to absorb the flavor of the truffles.

Roast and serve

  1. Cover the turkey with thin slices of bacon and strong paper.

  2. Roast for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the paper near the end to allow the turkey to brown for a few minutes 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

Truffles
Provide the dominant aroma and flavor that the turkey absorbs during resting.
Fat turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, and its fat keeps the meat moist during roasting.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the filling and wraps the bird to baste it while roasting.

The step that matters

Removing the paper near the end of roasting. Paper protects the skin from direct heat early on, so browning only develops once it is removed. Removing it too early can dry the surface, while leaving it on too long prevents the skin from browning and crisping.

“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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