Name: Roast Turkey
Ingredients: 1 turkey; bread crumbs; pepper; coarse sea salt; butter; onion; thyme or sage; oysters (optional); raisins (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 325°F (165°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat your oven to 325°F (165°C).
Prepare the turkey by allowing 15 minutes of roasting time per pound.
Roast the turkey slowly and baste it often.
Cover the breast with well-greased paper.
Stuff the turkey with a dressing made of bread crumbs, seasoned with pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, onion, and thyme or sage.
Alternatively, mix oysters with the bread crumbs or use oysters only.
For another variation, add raisins and sage to the bread crumbs and omit the onion.

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.

Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together233 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, pepper, butter, onion, thyme, oyster):

Lemonfits better
Plumfits better
Figfits better
Raisinthe original

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