Name: To Roast a Turkey
Ingredients: 1 whole turkey; coarse sea salt; pepper; butter

Why it works: Turkey and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,592 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

To Roast a Turkey

Ingredients

1 whole turkey
coarse sea salt
pepper
butter

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Clean the turkey and pat it dry.
Rub the turkey inside and out with coarse sea salt and pepper.
Place the turkey in a roasting pan and spread butter over the skin.

Roast and rest

Roast the turkey in the preheated oven, basting occasionally, until the internal temperature reaches 165°F (74°C).
Let the turkey rest for 20 minutes before carving.

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.

Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,636 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey: Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through to a tender, moist meat when heated gently.
Butter: Adds fat that promotes browning on the skin and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Roasting until the internal temperature reaches 165°F (74°C). Thick poultry can look done outside while the centre is still undercooked. Checking the internal temperature confirms the meat is safe, while avoiding overcooking that dries out the breast.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.