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Wild Turkey

A roasted wild turkey prepared with a breadcrumb and pork stuffing, buttered and basted, served with gravy, sausages, parsley, 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 turkey

  1. Draw the turkey.

  2. Wash the turkey's inside carefully.

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

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

  5. Stuff the turkey.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste the turkey with a mixture of butter and water for the first hour.

  2. Baste the turkey three to four times with gravy.

  3. Baste the turkey five to six times with melted butter.

  4. Dredge the turkey with flour.

  5. Froth the turkey with butter.

  6. Roast the turkey until golden brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Skim the gravy.

  2. Add hot water to the gravy.

  3. Add pepper to the gravy.

  4. Thicken the gravy with chopped giblets and browned flour.

  5. Serve the gravy in a tureen.

Garnish and serve

  1. Place giblets under each wing.

  2. Garnish with small fried sausages.

  3. Garnish with crisped parsley.

  4. Serve with currant jelly.

  5. Serve with 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 until golden brown.
Bread crumbs
Bind the stuffing and absorb the moisture and fat within it.
Fat pork
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and flavorful as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Melted butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a golden surface on the turkey.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty color and flavor.

The step that matters

Roast the turkey until golden brown. Basting with fat and liquid keeps the surface moist while the proteins and sugars brown, so the bird browns evenly without drying out before the interior is cooked through.

“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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