Name: Roast Turkey
Ingredients: 7 lb turkey; 4 oz cheese; 5 slices bread; herbs and seasonings to taste; 3 tablespoons butter; 1 egg; 1 onion

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Dress the turkey as directed in the Chicken Carry recipe.
Twist the tips of the wings back under the shoulders.
Stuff the bird with forcemeat as directed.
Bend the legs up toward the breast and secure the thigh bones with a cord or skewer.
Fasten the legs down close to the vent.
Roast the bird as directed in the Roast Duck recipe, making the gravy as for that dish.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together822 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

Swap the onion

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

Asparagusfits better
Tomatofits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

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