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Dinde Truffle

A turkey stuffed with diced ham, truffles, nutmeg, white pepper, 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: Ham and truffle work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 516 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Dinde Truffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Singe and draw the turkey as directed.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the diced ham over medium heat.

  3. Add the truffles, nutmeg, white pepper, and bay leaf; stir for 15 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Stuff and hang

  1. Stuff 2 tablespoons of the mixture into the turkey's craw and the remainder into the body.

  2. Sew up the turkey, truss it, and hang in a cool, dry place for 5 days in winter or 2 days in warmer weather.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the turkey as directed for roast turkey and serve with truffle or Madeira 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. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Turkey + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Turkey + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

  5. Turkey + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Provide the dominant earthy aroma that flavours the whole bird.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stuffing mixture.
Fresh young hen-turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, carrying the stuffing as it roasts.

The step that matters

Cooling the truffle mixture before stuffing. Stuffing while the mixture is still hot can partially cook the bird from inside and encourage bacterial growth in the warm, moist filling. Letting it cool first keeps the stuffing safer and the turkey's texture more even during roasting.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, ham, truffle, nutmeg. 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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