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Boiled Turkey, with Celery Sauce

A boiled turkey stuffed with veal, served with a celery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Draw the turkey and remove the angular part of the breastbone.

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

  3. Wrap the turkey in buttered paper and place it in a braising pan with carrot, onion, celery, and parsley.

Boil

  1. Add enough white stock to cover the turkey and set it on the stove to boil.

  2. Once boiling, reduce the heat and let it gently boil until done.

  3. Remove the turkey from the braise, take off the string, and let it drain on a napkin.

Serve

  1. Serve the turkey with a puree of celery poured over it and garnish with stewed heads of celery.

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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by simmering to become tender.
Veal stuffing
Fills the bird and adds moisture and flavor to the meat as it cooks.
Celery
Flavors the braise and is puréed into the sauce that is poured over the turkey.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Gently boil the turkey after bringing it to a boil. Once the liquid boils, the heat must be reduced so it simmers gently. A hard boil toughens muscle fibers and can break the bird apart, while a gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps it tender and moist.

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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