Why it works: Turkey and bread work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 822 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Boiled Turkey
Ingredients
Directions
Pick the turkey clean and draw it at the rump.
Cut off the legs and tuck the ends of the thighs into the body, then tie them fast.
Flour the turkey and place it in cold water.
Boil gently, skimming off the scum, and cover the kettle.
Boil for about 30 more minutes.
Make stuffing with grated bread, lemon peel, suet, chopped oysters, eggs, and cream.
Fill the turkey's cavity with stuffing and form the rest into balls.
Boil the stuffing balls and arrange them around the dish.
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.
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Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together822 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,445 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Turkey + lemontop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together464 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, egg, cream):
- Figfits better
- Vanillafits about as well
- Raspberryfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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