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Turkey, Stewed or Braised

A whole turkey stewed with bacon, butter, onions, carrots, turnip, bouquet garni, peppercorns, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turkey, Stewed or Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Truss the turkey as for roasting.

  2. Heat the butter in a stewpan and fry the turkey until browned on all sides, then remove it.

Stew

  1. Add the vegetables, bouquet garni, peppercorns, and season with salt.

  2. Pour in enough stock to nearly cover the turkey.

  3. Replace the turkey in the pan, lay the bacon slices on the breast, cover, and cook gently for about 2 hours or until tender.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, becoming tender as it stews slowly in liquid.
Butter
Fat that browns the turkey's surface, adding colour and rich flavour before stewing.
Bacon
Lies on the breast to add savoury fat that bastes the meat as it cooks.
Onions
Break down during stewing to add sweetness and savoury depth to the cooking liquid.
Carrots
Release sugars during slow cooking, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Oyster sauce or brown sauce
Adds savoury depth and colour to the cooking liquid, enriching the final sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the turkey in butter. Searing creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Drying the surface and browning evenly on all sides gives better colour and taste before the gentle stew.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, butter, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, 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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