Name: Turkey, Chicken, Etc
Ingredients: meat (turkey or chicken); stuffing; butter; hot water; flour; burned sugar (optional)

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Turkey, Chicken, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the meat into manageable pieces.
In a deep pan, boil the remaining gravy.

Stew

Add the meat and stuffing to the pan and stew together, keeping it covered.
If more gravy is needed, mix 1 tablespoon of butter with 1 cup of hot water and add it.
Sprinkle flour over the meat and turn the pieces to mix the flour in.
Remove the meat.
Brown the meat with a little burned sugar.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,529 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

Meat (turkey or chicken): Forms the main body of the stew and provides the savory base.
Stuffing: Cooks together with the meat and adds bulk and flavor to the gravy.
Butter: Adds richness and fat to the extra gravy.
Flour: Thickens the gravy as it cooks with 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.