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Braised Roast Turkey, Capon, or Fowl

A roasted turkey or fowl braised with onions, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, bay leaves, bacon, lemon, and fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Braised Roast Turkey, Capon, or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and wash the onions, carrot, turnip, and celery, then cut them into thin slices.

  2. Lay the vegetables on three sheets of paper and pour the oil over them.

  3. Truss the turkey or fowl as for boiling.

Wrap and roast

  1. Cover the breast with bacon slices, then place the bird on the vegetables.

  2. Lay lemon slices on the breast.

  3. Tie the paper around the bird with string and pass a spit through it.

  4. Roast before the fire, pouring plenty of fat over to moisten the paper.

  5. Roast for 3 hours for turkey, 2 hours for capon, 1.5 hours for poularde, 1 hour for fowl, and 30 minutes for chickens.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey, capon, or fowl
Provides the main meat that is cooked through over long, gentle roasting.
Thin slices of bacon
Lies over the breast to baste it with rendered fat and keep it moist.
Fat for roasting
Moistens the paper and bird, promoting even browning and preventing drying.
Onions
Sit under the bird, adding aromatic flavour to the juices that collect below.
Oil
Coats the vegetables, helping them brown and carry flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring plenty of fat over the paper. Fat keeps the wrapping and skin moist and helps them brown evenly. Without enough fat, the paper can scorch and the surface of the bird can dry out during the long roast.

Swap the onion

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

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

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