Skip to main content
Main

To Braise a Turkey

A turkey braised with onions, carrots, turnip, celery, bay leaves, parsley, bacon, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Braise a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and wash the onions, carrots, and turnip.

  2. Cut the peeled vegetables into thin slices.

  3. Lay the sliced vegetables on clean paper.

  4. Drizzle the vegetables with olive oil.

Prepare the turkey

  1. Truss the turkey.

  2. Cover the turkey breast with bacon slices.

  3. Place the turkey on the vegetables.

  4. Add lemon slices on the turkey breast.

  5. Tie the paper around the turkey with string.

Roast

  1. Roast the turkey for 3 hours.

  2. If using a braise pan, omit the paper but keep the vegetables underneath and lemon on the breast.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey (in the method)
Provides the main protein; slow cooking over vegetables keeps the meat moist and tender.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory flavor as they soften and caramelize in the pan juices.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the braising liquid as they cook.
Turnip
Contributes mild sweetness and earthy flavor to the vegetable base beneath the bird.
Bacon slices
Baste the breast with rendered fat, adding richness and helping keep the lean meat moist.
Olive oil
Adds fat that helps the vegetables brown lightly and carry flavor.

The step that matters

Roast the turkey for 3 hours. Lean turkey dries out if overcooked, while long cooking under cover breaks down connective tissue and keeps the meat tender. Keeping the paper or vegetable bed in place helps hold in moisture during the roast.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, olive, lemon):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, olive, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipes