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Roast Turkey

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clean, wash, and dry the turkey.

  2. Rub the inside with coarse sea salt.

  3. Fill with dressing made of soaked and squeezed bread crumbs, seasoned with butter, pepper, salt, and sage.

  4. Sew up and truss the turkey.

  5. Place in a roasting pan with water and a large piece of butter.

  6. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, and add a few bits of butter or thin slices of fat salt pork.

  7. Baste often until nearly done.

  8. Chop the giblets finely and cook in a small saucepan until tender.

  9. When the turkey is done, add the giblets to the gravy and thicken with wetted flour.

  10. Bake until the turkey is tender and a rich brown.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

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

  4. Turkey + sagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the sage

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

  1. Sagethe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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

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