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Turkey Soup

A clear soup made from turkey carcass, leftover meat, water, salt, pepper, and optional celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Turkey Soup

Why it works: Pepper and celery 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 ↓

Turkey Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the turkey carcass into pieces and remove all stuffing.

  2. Place the carcass and any leftover meat in a kettle.

Simmer

  1. Cover with cold water and bring slowly to a boil.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Optionally, cook 1-2 stalks of celery with the carcass for additional flavor.

Strain and season

  1. Strain the soup, remove the fat, and season with salt and pepper.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Turkey + celerytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Meat + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,880 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey carcass
Provides bones and connective tissue that release flavor and body into the broth as it simmers.
Leftover turkey meat
Adds meaty flavor and tender pieces to the finished soup.
Cold water
Forms the broth; starting cold lets flavors extract gradually as the liquid heats.

The step that matters

Bring slowly to a boil. Starting with cold water and heating gently lets proteins and flavors release gradually. Boiling hard early can cloud the broth and make it greasy.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, pepper. 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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