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Braised Roast Turkey, Capon, or Fowl

A braised roast turkey, capon, or fowl cooked with onions, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, bay leaves, bacon, lemon, and fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Roast Turkey, Capon, or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and wash the onions, carrot, turnip, and celery. Cut them into thin slices.

  2. Spread the vegetables on a sheet of paper and pour the oil over them.

Prepare the bird

  1. Truss the turkey or fowl as for boiling.

  2. Cover the breast with thin slices of bacon.

  3. Place the bird on the vegetables.

  4. Lay lemon slices on the breast to keep it white.

  5. Tie the paper around the bird with string.

  6. Pass a spit through it.

Roast

  1. Roast before the fire.

  2. Pour plenty of fat over to moisten the paper and prevent burning.

  3. Roast for 3 hours for turkey, 2 hours for capon, 1.5 hours for poularde, 1 hour for fowl, and 30 minutes for chickens.

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

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

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey, capon, or fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so the meat stays moist under the paper.
Bacon
Lays fat over the breast, basting the lean meat and protecting it from drying out.
Onions
Sit under the bird on the paper, adding aroma and flavour to the drippings.
Carrot
Sits under the bird, adding sweetness and aroma to the drippings.
Fat for roasting
Moistens the paper and bird, helping prevent burning and keeping the meat juicy.

The step that matters

Pouring plenty of fat over the paper. The paper wrapping can scorch in the heat. Regular fat keeps it moist, and fat conducts heat evenly, so the paper and the bird brown without burning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, turkey, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, turkey, lemon. 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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