Thursday, December 3, 2009

Self-cooking Turkeys and the perils of extrapolation


In a jovial mood over Thanksgiving, as my mother attempted to figure out how long to cook our 18 lb bird, I came up with the following graph:


Basically, Joy of Cooking recommends different lengths of cooking time per pound your turkey weighs. They give three increments based on a range of total bird weight, as as the bird gets larger, the length of time per pound decreases. Amused at the thought of this, I did a little extrapolation, and determined that if we get a ~32 pound turkey next year, according to the Joy of Cooking, it should cook itself!!! (if we can ever get it to defrost)


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