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Boiled Turkey, with Celery Sauce

A boiled turkey served with celery sauce and stewed celery.

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

Boiled Turkey, with Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the angular part of the turkey's breastbone.

  2. Stuff the turkey with veal stuffing and truss it for boiling.

  3. Wrap the turkey in buttered paper.

Boil

  1. Place it in a braising pan with carrot, onion, celery, and parsley.

  2. Add enough white poele or white stock to cover the turkey.

  3. Boil on the stove, then reduce heat to simmer until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Remove the turkey from the braise and discard the string.

  2. Drain the turkey on a napkin.

  3. Serve with celery puree and stewed celery around it.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Young hen turkey
Provides the main meat, which cooks through gently in the simmering liquid.
Veal stuffing
Fills the bird and adds moisture and savoury flavour as it cooks inside.
Celery
Flavours the braising liquid and is served as stewed celery and puree.
White poele or white stock
Braising liquid that keeps the turkey moist and carries flavour during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil on the stove, then reduce heat to simmer until cooked through. Boiling too hard toughens the proteins and dries the meat, so the liquid should be brought up and then held at a gentle simmer until the turkey is cooked through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, veal, carrot, celery, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, veal, carrot, celery, parsley. 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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