Name: Roast Tuk
Ingredients: bread crumbs; sausage meat; sweet salt pork; thyme; summer savory; 1 onion; pepper; coarse sea salt; 1 cup hot water

Why it works: Thyme 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 214 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Tuk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, sausage meat, chopped sweet salt pork, thyme, summer savory, chopped onion, pepper, and coarse sea salt.
Fill the turkey with the stuffing, sew up the opening, and truss it.
Optionally, place a ring of sausages around the neck of the turkey.
Place the turkey in a pan with 1 cup of hot water.
Roast slowly, basting frequently, and cover the breast with white paper if it starts to scorch.
Roast for 2.5 to 3 hours until cooked through.
Serve with rich brown gravy and browned sausages on the breast.

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.

Thyme + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together214 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together671 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Summer savory + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together299 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, meat, pork, thyme, summer savory, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, meat, pork, thyme, summer savory, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.