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To Roast a Turkey

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and meat work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 540 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Roast a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pluck, draw, and singe the turkey carefully.

  2. Wash and dry the turkey thoroughly with clean cloths.

  3. Pour water through the inside of the turkey.

  4. Fill the breast with forcemeat or highly seasoned sausage meat.

  5. Truss the bird firmly and place it over a clear fire.

  6. Baste constantly with butter until done.

  7. Serve with good brown gravy and bread sauce.

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. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, butter, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, butter, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More roasted turkey recipes

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