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To Make Sauce for a Turkey

A sauce made with oysters, oyster liquor, white gravy, lemon pickle, flour, butter, and cream for turkey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Make Sauce for a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters and place them in a bowl.

  2. Wash the oysters in their own liquor.

  3. Transfer the oysters to another bowl.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the settled liquor into a saucepan with the white gravy and lemon pickle.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

  3. Boil for 3-4 minutes.

  4. Stir in the cream.

  5. Add the oysters.

  6. Keep shaking over the heat until the oysters are hot, but do not let them boil.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and texture of the sauce as they warm through.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour thicken the sauce smoothly.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep shaking over the heat until the oysters are hot, but do not let them boil.. Oysters toughen and shrink when overheated, so gentle heat keeps them tender while still warming them through.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, flour, butter, cream):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, flour, butter, cream. 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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