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To Stew a Turkey or Fowl

A simple stew of turkey or fowl with celery, mace, butter, red wine, ketchup, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Stew a Turkey or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Clean a pot and lay four skewers at the bottom.

  2. Place the turkey or fowl on the skewers and add the gravy.

  3. Add the chopped celery and mace to the pot.

  4. Stew softly until there is enough sauce.

  5. Mix in the butter, red wine, ketchup, pepper, and salt to season.

Finish and serve

  1. Lay the fowl or turkey in a dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over it.

  3. If the fowl or turkey is done before the sauce, remove it until the sauce is ready.

  4. Boil the sauce for 1-2 minutes.

  5. Return the fowl or turkey to the pot.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Turkey + celerytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 meat that becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour through the stew.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce for 1-2 minutes. Boiling the flour-thickened butter briefly cooks out the raw starch taste and lets the sauce thicken properly. Too little heat leaves it thin and floury, while long boiling can make it too thick.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, celery, butter, flour, red wine, ketchup, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, celery, butter, flour, red wine, ketchup, 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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