Name: To Roast a Turkey
Ingredients: 1 turkey; salt; pepper; flour; 3 thin slices of pickled pork; 1 pint hot water

Why it works: Turkey and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

To Roast a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Tie the legs and wings together or fasten with skewers.
Stuff the turkey and season it well with salt and pepper.
Dredge the turkey with flour.
Lay the slices of pickled pork across the breast bone.
Place the turkey in a pan with 1 pint of hot water, adding more as needed.

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 + porktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together830 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 + porktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Turkey + flourtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together963 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).