Name: How to Cook a Turkey
Ingredients: 1 young turkey (6-7 pounds); 2 medium-sized loaves of stale bread; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon black pepper; 1 teaspoon dried sage; 2 teaspoons dried summer savory; 1 tablespoon minced parsley; ½ cup butter

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 ↓

How to Cook a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Select a young turkey and draw, stuff, and truss it carefully.
Hang the turkey in a cold place for at least 24 hours after killing.
Remove all fat under the skin and the oil bag from the tail.
Remove the tendons from the drumsticks and wipe the bird clean.
Grate the stale bread until it is evenly crumbled to make about 1 quart of soft crumbs.
Mix the bread crumbs with salt, pepper, sage, summer savory, and parsley.
Rub in the butter and fill the inside and crop of the turkey with the stuffing.

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).
Summer savory + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together241 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sage + parsleytop 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 summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, pepper, sage, parsley, butter):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Summer savorythe original
Rosemaryfits less well

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