Name: Roast Turkey, Chicken or Duck
Ingredients: 1 quart stale bread, crumbled very fine; 1 tablespoon salt; 1 scant teaspoon pepper; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon powdered sage; 1 teaspoon summer savory; ½ cup butter; a little milk; flour for rubbing

Why it works: Sage and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey, Chicken or Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the fowl and wipe it dry.
Stuff the breast and body with the dressing made from the crumbled bread, salt, pepper, parsley, sage, summer savory, butter, and a little milk.
Sew up the fowl and tie the legs and wings close to the body.
Rub the fowl well with butter, pepper, salt, and flour.
Wrap the fowl in a cloth and baste often.
Turn the fowl over when it is about half done.

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.

Sage + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together237 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together241 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, sage, summer savory, butter, milk, flour):

Marjoramfits better
Thymefits better
Nutmegfits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, sage, summer savory, butter, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.