Name: Boiled Turkey
Ingredients: 1 turkey (less than 10 pounds); water; a few cloves; pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the turkey as you would for roasting.
Wrap the turkey in a cloth.

Boil and serve

Boil the turkey slowly in water for 1.5 hours.
Add cloves, pepper, and coarse sea salt to the water.
Serve with oysters.

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.

Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,636 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Turkey + clovetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey: Provides the main protein, which becomes tender and moist as it cooks slowly in water.
Cloves: Add a warm, aromatic flavor to the cooking water that carries into the meat.