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Roast Turkey

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Kill and dress the turkey at least two days in advance.

  2. Make a stuffing with bread crumbs, pepper, salt, marjoram, suet, and egg yolk.

  3. Chop the liver, gizzard, and heart for gravy.

  4. Stuff the turkey and sew the openings.

  5. Dredge the turkey with flour and place it in a baking pan with water at the bottom.

  6. Baste the turkey every half hour with butter.

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. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, pepper, egg, liver, flour, butter):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Marjoramthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, pepper, egg, liver, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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