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To Stew a Turkey

A stew of turkey with celery, butter sauce, and various seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Stew a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the turkey and celery

  1. Boil the turkey in water until almost cooked.

  2. Remove the turkey and keep it warm in a pot with some of the boiling water.

  3. Wash and clean the celery, then boil it in the turkey water until tender.

  4. Remove the celery and place the turkey breast down in the pot.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Stew the turkey for 15 minutes.

  2. In a separate pan, melt the butter and mix with flour to thicken the sauce.

  3. Add the cream and the boiled celery to the sauce.

  4. Pour the hot sauce over the turkey and serve.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Turkey + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies the meat that is cooked and served.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, with the flour forming the thickened base.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a sauce that coats the turkey.
Celery
Is boiled in the turkey water until tender and added to the sauce as a vegetable.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the sauce.
Veal gravy
Provides the liquid body and savoury depth of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter so its starch swells and thickens the sauce without a raw, pasty taste. Adding cream and celery afterward keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, butter, flour, cream, pepper, oyster, beef):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, flour, cream, pepper, oyster, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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