Name: Boiled Turkey
Ingredients: 1 hen turkey; boiled rice; parsley; oyster sauce or Hollandaise sauce; summer savory; sweet marjoram

Why it works: Summer savory and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 125 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the turkey and stuff it as you would for baking.
Sew up the turkey.
Cut the legs at the first joint and fasten them into the body.
Tie the small ends of the wings under the back.
Securely tie the legs and wings to the body.
Serve with boiled rice and parsley, along with oyster or Hollandaise sauce.

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.

Summer savory + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together125 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,979 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together241 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,762 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + marjoramtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together140 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, rice, oyster, summer savory, marjoram):

Thymefits better
Sagefits better
Parsleythe original
Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, rice, oyster, summer savory, marjoram. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.