Name: For a Turkey
Ingredients: ½ pound pork sausage meat; 1 egg; 2 ounces dressed ham, chopped fine; 1½ dozen oysters, chopped; oyster liquor; ¼ pound dressed ham, grated; nutmeg; bread crumbs

Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

For a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

Combine pork sausage meat and bread crumbs in a bowl, and rub them well together.
Set aside ½ pound of the mixture.
Add 1 egg to the reserved mixture and form into balls.

Cook and vary

Fry the balls and arrange them around the turkey for garnish.
For variation, add 2 ounces of chopped ham or 1½ dozen chopped oysters with their liquor to the stuffing.
For a chestnut stuffing, replace onion seasoning with basil and parsley, and add ¼ pound of grated ham and a hint of nutmeg.

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.

Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,208 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Pork + oystertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,255 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Pork + hamtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,638 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork sausage meat: Provides fat and savory meaty flavor that fills the stuffing.
Bread crumbs: Absorb fat and juices and give the stuffing its body.
Egg: Binds the reserved mixture so it holds together when formed into balls.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, meat, egg, ham, oyster, bread):

Nutmegthe original
Thymefits about as well
Capersfits about as well
Parsleyfits about as well

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

“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.