Name: Roast Turkey, Stuffed with Chestnuts
Ingredients: 2 turkeys; 80 to 100 large foreign chestnuts; Veal stuffing (twice the quantity of recipe No. 956) or sausage meat; Butter or suet; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Fine bread crumbs (optional)

Why it works: Butter and bread 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, Stuffed with Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the chestnuts in salted water until tender, about 30 minutes.
Peel the chestnuts and remove the inner skin.
Mix the chestnuts with the veal stuffing or sausage meat, adding butter or suet, salt, and pepper.
Stuff the turkeys with the mixture.
For a variation, mix sausage meat with one-third as much fine bread crumbs and use for 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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Turkey + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together136 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together822 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together826 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Chestnut + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together191 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the chestnut

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

Chestnutthe original
Peasfits about as well
Lima beansfits about as well
Beansfits less well

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