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Wild Turkey

A wild turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, pork fat, and spices, roasted and served with gravy, currant jelly, and cranberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Wild Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Draw and wash the turkey inside carefully.

  2. Wipe the cavity with a dry, soft cloth.

  3. Prepare a stuffing with bread crumbs, chopped fat pork, pepper, and salt. Moisten the stuffing with milk. Beat in the egg and melted butter.

  4. Stuff the turkey with the mixture.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste with butter and water for the first hour. Baste three to four times with gravy. Baste five to six times with melted butter.

  2. Dredge the turkey with flour before serving. Froth with butter.

  3. Roast until golden brown.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Skim the gravy. Add hot water. Add pepper. Thicken with chopped giblets and browned flour.

  2. Serve the gravy in a tureen.

  3. Garnish the turkey with fried sausages and parsley. Serve with currant jelly and cranberry sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Wild turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole around the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and butter to give the stuffing body and structure.
Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and richly flavoured during roasting.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Melted butter
Adds fat for moisture, richness and golden browning on the skin.
Giblets
Add meaty flavour to the gravy when chopped and cooked into it.

The step that matters

Roast until golden brown. Basting at intervals keeps the surface moist while fat and heat drive browning, so the skin colours evenly without drying out 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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