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To Stew a Turkey or Fowl

A stew of turkey or fowl cooked in broth with celery, mace, peppercorns, thyme, then thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,193 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Stew a Turkey or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the turkey

  1. Place the turkey or fowl in a saucepan with gravy or broth.

  2. Add celery, mace, peppercorns, and thyme in a muslin bag.

  3. Stew gently until the turkey or fowl is cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the turkey or fowl and thicken the cooking liquid with butter and flour.

  2. Serve the turkey or fowl on a dish and pour the sauce over 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. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  2. Turkey + thymetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, which becomes tender as it stews gently in the liquid.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rounded, rich flavour when thickened.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.

The step that matters

Thickening the cooking liquid. Flour and butter must be cooked together before or as they are whisked into the hot liquid, so the starch swells evenly and the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, celery, thyme, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, celery, thyme, butter, flour. 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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