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Turkey with Truffles

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. Singe the turkey and crush the feet with a chopper.

  2. Draw out the sinews by squeezing them between a door.

  3. Truss the turkey like a fowl for boiling or have it prepared by the poulterer.

  4. Set the turkey on a spit and fill the crop with truffles and stuffing.

  5. Cover the breasts with bards of fat bacon and tie on a paper.

Roast

  1. Roast according to the size of the turkey.

  2. A few minutes before it's done, remove the paper and bacon to brown the turkey.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish and pour truffle sauce around it.

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 + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes

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 provides the lean meat that is roasted.
Truffles
Contribute a strong earthy aroma that perfumes the meat as it roasts.
Fat bacon
Covers the breasts, adding fat that keeps the lean meat moist and protected from drying.
Truffle sauce
Adds moisture and concentrated truffle flavour to the meat served alongside it.

The step that matters

Removing the paper and bacon to brown the turkey. The paper and bacon shield the breasts from direct heat so they stay moist. Browning needs dry surface heat, so removing them only a few minutes before the end lets the skin colour through the Maillard reaction without overcooking the meat.

“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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