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Baked Turkey

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Baked Turkey

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Slice the sausages and place them in a frying pan with the plums, pears, and chestnuts.

  2. Fry in a little butter for about 2 minutes.

  3. Mix the cooked ingredients with the chopped turkey liver and Marsala or sherry to make forcemeat.

  4. Stuff the turkey with the forcemeat.

  5. Place the turkey in a baking dish with bacon slices, rosemary, and salt.

  6. Bake at 300°F (150°C), basting occasionally.

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. Plum + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Chestnut + rosemarytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Plum + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Pear + chestnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  5. Pear + sherrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

Swap the rosemary

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, pear, chestnut, butter, turkey, liver, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Rosemarythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, pear, chestnut, butter, turkey, liver, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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