Name: Roast Turkey, with Chestnut Stuffing
Ingredients: 1 turkey; 50 large French chestnuts; 3 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; ½ teaspoon black pepper

Why it works: Turkey and chestnut work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 136 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Roast Turkey, with Chestnut Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

Draw and clean the turkey as directed.
Shell and blanch the chestnuts.
Boil the chestnuts in enough water to cover for 30 minutes. Drain the water.

Stuff and roast

Mix the chestnuts with butter, salt, and pepper.
Stuff the mixture into the turkey.
Truss the turkey.
Roast the turkey as previously directed.

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.

Turkey + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together136 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together826 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,636 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Chestnut + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together965 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts: Provide the starchy, sweet body of the stuffing filling.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the chestnut filling.

“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.