Name: The Thanksgiving Dinner
Ingredients: 1 turkey; small fried sausages; blanched celery-tops; gravy; chopped giblets; cranberry sauce or jelly; sweet potatoes; crisp celery; lettuce

Why it works: Sweet potato and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 36 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The Thanksgiving Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Stuff the turkey well and baste it regularly while roasting.
Ensure the turkey is cooked evenly and not scorched.
Serve the turkey surrounded by small fried sausages and blanched celery-tops.
Accompany with a sauce-boat of gravy, skimming the fat before adding chopped giblets.
Add a dish of cranberry sauce or jelly and sweet potatoes.
Prepare a salad of fresh lettuce, washing and discarding any wilted leaves.
Chill the lettuce in the refrigerator until ready to serve.
Present the salad in a bowl lined with a clean napkin.

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.

Sweet potato + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together36 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Cranberry + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together24 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Cranberry + sweet potatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Celery + sweet potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together162 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, celery, cranberry, lettuce):

Mustardfits better
Beetrootfits better
Turnipfits better
Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, celery, cranberry, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.