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Turkey Stewed with Celery

A stew of turkey and celery flavored with bread crumbs, lemon rind, herbs, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Turkey Stewed with Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Stuff the turkey with a mixture of bread crumbs, lemon rind, minced herbs, salt, pepper, butter, and egg yolk.

  2. Skewer the turkey.

  3. Place it in a large saucepan filled with water.

  4. Boil until tender.

  5. Remove the turkey and keep it warm in another saucepan with some of the boiling water.

Cook the celery

  1. Wash the celery and add it to the saucepan with the turkey water.

  2. Stew until tender.

  3. Remove the celery and place the turkey breast down in the saucepan.

  4. Stew for 15 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Thicken the sauce with butter and flour.

  2. Add the cream.

  3. Warm the celery in the sauce.

  4. Pour the sauce and celery over the turkey before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hen-turkey
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle simmering.
Bread crumbs
Soak up cooking juices in the stuffing, keeping the filling moist.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing together so it holds its shape while cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Celery
Becomes tender in the broth and adds a mild, fresh vegetable flavor to the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter before liquid is added, otherwise it stays lumpy and tastes raw. Thickening works because starch granules swell in hot liquid and bind it into a smooth sauce.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, bread, lemon, pepper, butter, egg, cream):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, lemon, pepper, butter, egg, cream. 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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