Name: Roast Turkey
Ingredients: 1 ½ pints breadcrumbs; 2 tablespoons summer savory; 2 tablespoons thyme; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Flour for dusting; Butter for dotting; Drippings for basting; Giblets from turkey

Why it works: Summer savory and thyme 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 Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Draw, singe, and thoroughly clean the turkey.
Prepare the stuffing by mixing breadcrumbs, summer savory, thyme, salt, and pepper.
Fill the crop and body of the turkey with the stuffing and sew up the openings.
Truss the turkey and place it in a roasting pan.
Lightly dust the turkey with flour and dot it with pieces of butter.
Add a little drippings to the pan for the first basting.
Cover the turkey with a piece of clean white muslin to prevent scorching and baste through it.
Simmer the giblets in a saucepan until cooked, then chop and add to the pan gravy.
Thicken the gravy with a little flour and serve.

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 + thymetop 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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together263 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together671 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together233 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

Swap the summer savory

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

Sagefits better
Marjoramfits about as well
Summer savorythe original
Parsleyfits about as well

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