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Turkey Ek Haricot-vierge

A turkey served with stewed turnips and celery, topped with béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turkey Ek Haricot-vierge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Blanch the turnips in boiling water.

  2. Stew the turnips in good consommé with sugar, salt, and butter, covered with a round paper, until nearly dry.

  3. Place the turnips on a sieve to drain.

  4. Stew the celery in the same manner as the turnips in a separate pan.

Serve

  1. Boil the turkey and place it on a serving dish.

  2. Garnish the turkey with the stewed turnips and celery, and pour béchamel sauce over the top.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Turnips
Provide the main vegetable body, becoming tender as they stew in the consommé.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury consommé and the mild turnips.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the stewed vegetables.
Celery
Softens as it stews and absorbs the flavour of the consommé.

The step that matters

Stew the turnips until nearly dry. Stopping at nearly dry concentrates the flavour and keeps the turnips from turning mushy. Cooking too long can scorch the sugar and butter at the base of the pan.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, sugar, butter, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, sugar, butter, sauce. 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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