Skip to main content
Main

Turkey, Stewed or Braised

A whole turkey stewed with bacon, butter, vegetables, and stock until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turkey, Stewed or Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the turkey as for roasting.

Brown and stew

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan and fry the turkey until browned on all sides, then remove it.

  2. Add the vegetables, bouquet garni, peppercorns, and a good seasoning of salt.

  3. Pour in enough stock to nearly cover the turkey.

  4. Replace the turkey in the pan, lay the bacon slices on the breast, cover closely, and cook gently for about 2 hours, or until the turkey is tender.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and moist as it stews slowly.
Butter
Browns the turkey surface and adds richness to the cooking fat.
Bacon
Lays fat across the breast, basting the meat and adding savoury flavour as it cooks.
Onions
Break down during stewing, adding sweetness and body to the cooking liquid.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the turkey and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Cook gently with the pan covered. Slow, low-heat stewing with a tight lid keeps the liquid from boiling hard, so the meat turns tender rather than dry and stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, butter, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipes