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To Roast a Turkey

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the turkey thoroughly.

  2. Make stuffing by mixing sausage meat or bread crumbs, parsley, salt pork, lemon peel, butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and egg.

  3. Fill the crop and body of the turkey with the stuffing and sew it up.

  4. Tie the legs and wings together.

  5. Cover the breast with white paper to prevent scorching.

  6. Rub the turkey with butter, salt, and flour before roasting.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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

More roasted turkey recipes

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