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Thanksgiving Dinner

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 28 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Thanksgiving Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Serve blue points on half shell.

  2. Prepare cream of tomato soup and add croutons.

  3. Bake blue fish and serve with tartar sauce and celery.

  4. Roast turkey and serve with brown sauce, chestnut dressing, crabapple jelly, baked onions, squash, and mashed potatoes.

  5. Serve plum pudding with hard sauce, along with mince pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and cheese.

  6. Serve maple ice cream with lady fingers.

  7. Offer fruits, nuts, and bon bons.

  8. Provide crackers and toasted cheese.

  9. Serve sweet cider.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + chestnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Oyster + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Turkey + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, cream, tomato, fish, sauce, celery, turkey):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutthe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, cream, tomato, fish, sauce, celery, turkey. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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