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A Wedding Supper

A wedding supper featuring turkey, roast pig, hams, ducks, chickens, mutton, spiced beef, beef tongue, oysters, slaw, pickles, celery, sauces, and flowers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,147 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Cook the turkey early in the morning.

  2. Prepare the roast pig and garnish both meats.

  3. Stuff and cook the hams.

  4. Prepare the boned turkey in jelly and roast the ducks.

  5. Cook and prepare chicken salad from the ten chickens.

  6. Roast the saddle of mutton and spiced beef.

  7. Slice the beef tongue and bake the chickens.

  8. Boil the turkey and cover it with hard boiled eggs.

Prepare the sides and table

  1. Prepare pickled oysters, cold slaw, and various pickles.

  2. Arrange celery in glass stands and set out sauces, catch-ups, and salad oil.

  3. Serve 10 gallons of hot stewed oysters in soup plates.

  4. Decorate the table with large vases of flowers.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Chicken + beeftop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Turkey + chickentop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together690 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  3. Mutton + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Turkey + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together248 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + muttontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together471 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main roasted and boiled poultry dishes, giving the spread its centerpiece meat.
Ducks
Roasting renders fat and browns the skin, adding richness and savory flavor to the spread.
Hard boiled eggs
Cover the boiled turkey, adding a firm, mild-flavored garnish with a contrast in texture.
Pickled oysters
Vinegar brine adds acidity that cuts through the rich meats and balances the flavors.
Hot stewed oysters
Gently simmered in liquid, they stay tender and moist and add a savory, briny flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the turkey early in the morning. A large bird needs long, slow cooking to heat through evenly without drying out the outer meat, so starting early leaves time for it to cook fully and rest before serving.

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, ham, chicken, mutton, beef, egg, oyster):

  1. Pepperabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Parsleyabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, ham, chicken, mutton, beef, egg, oyster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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