Why it works: Turkey and meat work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 540 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
Turkey-bone Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the carcass
Scrape the meat from the bones. Set aside any nice pieces.
Remove the filling.
Break the bones.
Make the stock
Pack the bones in a kettle. Cover with cold water.
Add the onion. Cover closely.
Simmer gently for 3 hours.
Strain the stock. Remove the fat.
Finish the soup
Return the stock to the fire. Add 1 cup of cold meat and ¾ cup of filling for every quart of stock.
Let the soup simmer for 30 minutes.
Serve.
Boil 10 oysters in the soup for 3 minutes. Serve again.
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.
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Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together540 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together473 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
-
Onion + meattop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,364 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Meat + oystertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together536 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Turkey + oniontop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together577 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Turkey or chicken carcass
- Provides the bones, marrow and collagen that give the stock its body and flavour.
- Cold meat from the carcass
- Adds meaty substance and texture to the finished soup.
- Filling from the carcass
- Adds body and savoury flavour to the soup.
- Oysters
- Add a briny, delicate seafood flavour when briefly boiled in the soup.
The step that matters
Simmer gently for 3 hours. A gentle simmer extracts flavour and collagen from the bones slowly, while a hard boil makes the stock cloudy and greasy.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, oyster):
- Shallotfits better
- Asparagusfits better
- Tomatofits about as well
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, oyster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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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