Name: To Boil a Turkey
Ingredients: 1 turkey; Chopped suet; Bread crumbs; Chopped parsley; Pepper; Coarse sea salt; Nutmeg; 1 egg

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

To Boil a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the turkey by removing feathers and singeing hair with burning paper without blackening the skin.
Thoroughly clean the inside by drawing and wiping.
Cut off the legs at the first joints and remove the sinews; pull down the skin and tuck the legs inside.
Cut off the head close to the body, leaving the skin long, and remove the craw.
Make stuffing by mixing chopped suet, bread crumbs, chopped parsley, pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little nutmeg; wet with 1 egg.
Stuff the mixture into the breast, leaving room for it to swell, then pull the skin of the breast over the stuffing.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together822 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the nutmeg

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

Thymefits better
Sagefits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well
Nutmegthe original

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