Most turkey rub recipes have the same flaw. They dump the salt in with the herbs, hand you one fixed quantity, and leave you guessing whether that amount is right for the bird sitting in your refrigerator. A 10-pound turkey and a 22-pound turkey are not the same problem, and salt is the one ingredient where guessing has consequences.

There is a jar of apple pie spice on the grocery shelf that costs more than the individual spices it contains, and it is mostly cinnamon. That is the whole product. Cinnamon, a little nutmeg, a little allspice, and a price tag that assumes you will not look at the ingredient list.

There is a specific kind of despair that arrives when you are halfway into a recipe, reach into the cabinet, and find no pumpkin pie spice. Or worse, find a jar that has been in there since a previous administration.