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Pulled Turkey or Fowl

A dish of shredded turkey or fowl served with a gravy made from its bones and sautéed vegetables.

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 ↓

Pulled Turkey or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the bones in strips using two forks.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the onion, turnip, and celery until browned.

  2. Make a gravy using the bones and the fried vegetables.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 is pulled into strips for the dish.
Butter
Fat that carries the heat and helps the vegetables brown evenly in the pan.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savory depth to the gravy base.
Turnip
Browns to add sweetness and a mellow, earthy flavor to the gravy.
Celery
Browns to add aromatic, savory depth to the gravy base.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables. Frying until browned drives Maillard reactions and caramelization, which build the gravy's savory, sweet flavor. Too little browning leaves it flat, while burnt vegetables turn bitter and spoil the gravy.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

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