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Christmas Dinner

A traditional Christmas dinner featuring turkey, ham, suckling pig, potatoes, squash, turnips, beans, yams, sauces, biscuits, pies, cakes, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and plum share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 16 recipes mention both. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the mains

  1. Roast the whole turkey.

  2. Garnish the turkey with strings of red cranberries.

  3. Serve cold sliced ham.

  4. Roast the suckling pig.

Make the sides

  1. Prepare mashed potatoes.

  2. Cook winter squash.

  3. Make creamed turnips.

  4. Steam string beans.

  5. Prepare candied yams.

  6. Serve cranberry sauce.

  7. Make homemade pickles.

Preserves, bread and desserts

  1. Prepare strawberry jam.

  2. Prepare damson preserves.

  3. Serve honey and country butter.

  4. Bake hot biscuits.

  5. Prepare mince pie.

  6. Prepare plum pudding.

  7. Prepare fruit cake.

  8. Serve milk.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cranberry + plumtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Winter squash + yamtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Potato + yamtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + yamtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Roasting cooks the bird through and browns its skin, giving the main roasted centrepiece.
Suckling pig
Roasting cooks the meat through and crisps the skin, forming the main roasted centrepiece.
Winter squash
Cooking softens its dense flesh and adds natural sweetness to the savoury sides.
Hot biscuits
Baking sets the dough into a light, flaky texture when served warm.

Flavor stand-ins for the winter squash

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, ham, potato, turnip, beans, yam, cranberry):

  1. Orangebetter flavor fit
  2. Applebetter flavor fit
  3. Limebetter flavor fit
  4. Winter squashthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, ham, potato, turnip, beans, yam, cranberry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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