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Roast Turkey

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clean and singe the turkey, then remove the claws.

  2. Dip the feet in boiling water to remove the skin.

  3. Slit the feet with a sharp knife to prevent them from curling during cooking.

  4. Twist the tips of the wings behind the shoulders.

  5. Skewer the turkey by passing a skewer through the under part of one wing, through the top part of one leg, straight through the body, through the top part of the other leg, and through the under part of the other wing.

  6. Use another skewer to secure the legs by inserting it through the skin at the side.

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.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Turkey + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

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

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