Before theater professionals perform a play for an audience, they run a dress rehearsal to look for kinks that need fixing before the show opens.

Traditional Thanksgiving dinner is a big production that can benefit from rehearsal, too, say some veteran hosts.

Cortney McLellan grew up helping her mother cook, but was nervous when she was stepping up to host her family’s Thanksgiving.

“My quote-unquote ‘recipe book’ was in my head,” recalled the Flushing, Mich. resident. “I wanted to make sure I had all the recipes right.”

Thanksgiving’s traditional dishes — roast turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes and pie — weren’t part of McLellan’s everyday repertoire: “I can’t usually afford all those carbs the rest of the year,” she said.

So before hosting the whole family, she did a test run with her daughter and husband. Almost everything came out well, but when the dressing wasn’t quite right, she consulted her mom, Nancy McLellan. The two conferred on ingredients, technique, cooking time.

“She ended up giving me her stuffing pan for Thanksgiving. It just didn’t taste the same without it,” McLellan said.

Samuella Becker went a more formal route to practice for Thanksgiving: She took a class at the New School in New York City where she prepared turkey, side dishes, appetizers and dessert.

Becker learned some specifics — she bought an electric knife for carving, and learned how to buy the right turkey for the number of guests — to try to approximate the feast of her Ohio childhood.

“What I mostly learned was to be more confident in the kitchen,” said Becker, who’d previously roasted a turkey with the giblet bag still inside.

Carl Collins co-hosts a monthly dinner party in New York City with a friend, Robert Blinn, and they often use their October gathering to test-drive new Thanksgiving dishes. Now that he’s hosted Thanksgiving for several years, Collins enjoys pushing the envelope — they’ve tried turkey ramen, as well as roasted rabbit and poached octopus.

But with a nod to tradition, Collins said, “My favorite side dish to test is stuffing.” Additionally, he’s experimented with variations on turkey methods, including cooking the legs and breast separately.