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Turkey Cock, in Jelly, or Thick Sauce

A whole turkey cooked in broth and spices, then served cold with its jelly or thick sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 360 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Turkey Cock, in Jelly, or Thick Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Clean the turkey.

  2. Truss the turkey with its feet inside its body.

  3. Lard the turkey with large pieces of fat meat seasoned with spices and herbs.

  4. Sew and tie the turkey.

Braise

  1. Place the turkey in a deep stewpan.

  2. Add slices of fat pork, knuckle of veal, onions, carrots, thyme, bay leaf, leeks, garlic, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover the turkey with broth until it is submerged.

  4. Cover the pot with paper and seal the pot tightly.

  5. Cook the turkey over low heat for 7 to 8 hours.

  6. Turn the turkey halfway through the cooking time.

  7. Remove the turkey from heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Dress the turkey on a plate.

  2. Strain the sauce.

  3. Skim the sauce.

  4. Pour the sauce over the turkey.

  5. Serve the turkey cold the next day with its jelly.

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. Thyme + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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 its connective tissue becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin into the broth, which sets into the jelly once the sauce is chilled.
Fat pork and fat meat
Adds fat and richness, keeping the lean turkey moist during the long cooking.
Onions, carrots and leeks
Flavour base that sweetens and rounds the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat for 7 to 8 hours. Low, long heat slowly breaks down collagen in the connective tissue into gelatin without drying the meat. Too much heat toughens the meat and leaves the broth cloudy and unable to set into a clear jelly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, pork, veal, carrot, thyme, leek):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, pork, veal, carrot, thyme, leek. 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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