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To Stew a Turkey or Fowl

A stew of turkey or fowl simmered with celery, mace, gravy, butter, flour, red wine, ketchup, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper 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 ↓

To Stew a Turkey or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean a pot.

  2. Lay four skewers at the bottom of the pot.

  3. Place the turkey or fowl on the skewers.

  4. Add 1 quart of gravy and the chopped, washed celery.

  5. Add 2-3 blades of mace.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew softly until the sauce is reduced.

  2. Mix butter and flour.

  3. Add the mixture to the pot along with red wine, ketchup, pepper, and salt.

Serve

  1. Place the fowl or turkey in a dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over it 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour 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 or fowl
Provides the main meat that the stew is built around.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the flavor through the stew.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the sauce, and butter adds richness and smooth body.
Celery
Adds a mild, savory aroma and vegetable flavor to the stock.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour into the sauce. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Mixing it smoothly with butter first, then stirring it in, lets starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, celery, butter, flour, red wine, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, celery, butter, flour, red wine, ketchup, 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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