Name: Turkey for Roasting
Ingredients: 1 turkey; ½ cup minced suet; a few crumbs of bread; a little minced parsley; a few oysters (optional); pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 raw 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 ↓

Turkey for Roasting

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the turkey and singe it with white paper.
Wipe it with a coarse cloth.
Cut the skin at the back of the neck and remove the crop.
Cut the neck bone and remove it, leaving the skin attached to the breast and head.
Cut the vent and remove the liver, gizzard, and gut, being careful not to break the gall.
Wipe the inside clean.
Place a doubled cloth on the breast and flatten the breastbone with a rolling pin.
Mix the suet, bread crumbs, parsley, oysters (if using), pepper, salt, and raw egg to make stuffing.
Stuff the breast with the mixture.
Twist the neck skin around the wing and place the head between the breast and wing, facing forward.
Skewer the wing close to the back, leaving room for the spit.
Push back the legs to the wings and skewer them near the backbone.
Twist the feet close to the leg and catch the claws under the wing pinion.
Skewer through the side bone and thin part of the leg, then through the apron, meeting the other side the same way.
Put the rump through the vent.
To spit the turkey, enter the spit at the vent, passing it between the skewers and the backbone, and out at the back of the neck.

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).
Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together822 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,545 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,103 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, bread, oyster, pepper, egg):

Parsleythe original
Sagefits about as well
Nutmegfits about as well
Thymefits about as well

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