The holiday season is almost here. It’s a good time to look at the fun and informative ways Wolfram Language can contribute to your holiday meal planning. We are focusing here on Thanksgiving dinner, but these are useful tools for any holiday or family event that involves food!

Planning Your Menu with Nutrition Analysis

New resource functions in the Wolfram Function Repository make it easy to view the nutritional values of a classic Thanksgiving dinner. These values can simplify the process of planning a nutritious meal that accounts for certain restrictions your guests may have.

Calories and Macronutrients

NutrientComparisonBarChart shows that turkey breast is leaner than turkey leg and thigh meat with its lower calories and fat content. Turkey breast also provides higher protein. Not surprisingly, stuffing is the top contributor to calories and carbohydrates per gram, but it is so worth it:

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NutritionReport gives a breakdown of calories and macronutrients for each food and then the totals for the whole meal. If you’re counting calories or carbohydrates, this is a good way to plan ahead:

Vitamins and Minerals

NutritionLabelData provides the percent of recommended daily value of vitamins and minerals in a 4 oz serving of cooked turkey breast. Turkey is high in niacin and vitamin B6, which are important for energy metabolism and neurological health:

Amino Acids

AminoAcidsBarChart and EssentialAminoAcidsChart are easy ways to compare the “building blocks of protein” in turkey versus other poultry. It was surprising to see goose take the lead in many of the amino acids, including tryptophan, the sleep-inducing amino acid usually associated with turkey:

Essential amino acids are the nine amino acids that our bodies cannot synthesize and must be obtained from our diets. Turkey squeaked ahead in lysine and methionine, necessary for protein synthesis, calcium absorption, hormone production, tissue growth and detoxification:

Fatty Acids

Saturated fatty acids (SFAs) in turkey meat include palmitic acid, the most prevalent saturated fatty acid in most diets, as well as stearic acid. Unlike other saturated fats, stearic acid has a neutral effect on blood cholesterol levels because it does not raise low-density lipoprotein (LDL), often called “bad cholesterol,” in the bloodstream.

The primary monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) found in cooked turkey is oleic acid, which supports heart health. However, olive and avocado oils are richer sources of oleic acid.

Turkey meat provides some polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), including linoleic acid, which is important for heart and skin health, as well as regulating inflammation.

Turkey is not a significant source of omega-3 fatty acids like eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which are vital for heart and brain health and keeping inflammation in check. Recommended sources of omega-3 fatty acids are fatty fish, like salmon, mackerel and sardines, as well as walnuts and flaxseed:

Managing a Busy Kitchen during the Holidays

Preparing a multi-course meal for a large group can be overwhelming! Recipe graphs and timelines are great tools to help organize the meal preparation and cooking process during the holidays.

Recipe Graph

If you find flowcharts more intuitive than step-by-step instructions, use RecipeGraph to create a directed graph of your favorite Thanksgiving recipe. The large language model (LLM) can even write a recipe for you:

Timeline of Two Recipes

Preparing multiple recipes at once can be a challenge for even the most efficient cooks, especially during the holidays. Working together, an LLM and Wolfram Language can build a single timeline for the recipes. The timeline is especially useful for knowing when to begin preparing ingredients. In this example of potato soup and spinach dip, I remind the LLM that I am a home cook, not a professional chef. The timeline shows that I need to begin my prep work 65 minutes before serving:

Safety First

Nobody wants foodborne pathogens to be the uninvited guests at Thanksgiving dinner. Here are several ways to help prevent food safety hazards during the holidays.

Turkey Cooking Time

Calculate the cooking time based on your turkey’s weight using natural language in Wolfram|Alpha:

After cooking, use a food thermometer to make sure the turkey has reached a minimum internal temperature of 165° F (74° C). To check, insert the food thermometer into the thickest part of the breast, thigh and wing. If you cooked stuffing inside the turkey, check the temperature at the center of the stuffing to ensure it also has reached 165° F. For more information, visit www.foodsafety.gov.

Minimum Internal Temperatures

With FoodSafetyExplorer, you can review the minimum internal temperatures for a range of cooked foods:

To Brine or Not to Brine

Brine is a solution of water and salt. The salt in brine dissolves some of the protein in the turkey’s muscle fibers, which can reduce moisture loss during cooking. If you plan to brine your turkey, Wolfram Language can calculate the mixture for you. A basic turkey brine recipe is four quarts of water to 240 grams of kosher salt. Let’s define a function to calculate how much salt is needed to create any volume of brine:

Test that it gives what we expect:

Then use it for any volume:

Do not brine any longer than two days, and always keep the turkey and brine refrigerated at 40° F or lower. Discard the brine mixture afterward. Do not reuse it. Visit the USDA to learn more about how to brine a turkey.

Recipe Risk Analysis

With RecipeRiskAnalysis, the LLM can help identify critical points in a recipe that may introduce food safety hazards, such as the risks highlighted in this recipe for deviled eggs:

Safe Storage of Leftovers

Once you’re stuffed and ready to call it a day, it’s time to clean up! Using the maximum cold storage times in Wolfram Language, you can decide whether to refrigerate or freeze those Thanksgiving leftovers:

Happy Thanksgiving!

To our Wolfram community, we are thankful year-round for your creativity and passion for innovation. We wish you a Thanksgiving season filled with joy, good food and great computations!