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Stewed Turkey

A stew of turkey pieces cooked with water, salt pork, onion, salt, pepper, and thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a pot, combine turkey pieces, water, salt pork, onion, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cook gently for 1.5 hours.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove turkey pieces from the pot.

  2. Mix flour with butter.

  3. Add the mixture to the pot.

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. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

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

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking in liquid.
Flour
Starch that thickens the cooking liquid into a richer, looser sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the flour blend into the liquid.
Onion
Adds aroma and mild sweetness as it softens in the simmering liquid.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Add the flour and butter mixture to the pot. Flour must be stirred into the hot liquid so its starch disperses evenly. If it is dropped in clumped, the starch cooks into lumps instead of thickening the sauce smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pork, pepper, flour, butter. 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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