Skip to main content
Main

Blanquettes of Turkey

A savory stew of sliced turkey in a cream and egg yolk sauce, served with bread and cucumber garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Blanquettes of Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Chop the bones and place them in a stewpan with the onion, mace, and ham or bacon.

  2. Cover with water and boil for 20 minutes to make stock.

  3. Prepare a white sauce using the stock as directed in recipe No. 135.

Make the blanquette

  1. Cut the turkey meat into small thin slices.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the turkey slices with a little of the white sauce, white pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Heat gently without boiling, then stir in the cream mixed with the egg yolk.

  4. Pour onto a dish and serve with triangular pieces of fried or toasted bread.

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. For the cucumbers, cut into 2-inch pieces, split them, peel, and remove seeds.

  2. In a stewpan, combine cucumbers with chopped onions, butter, and sugar, and stew gently until tender.

  3. Add the cucumbers to the blanquette five minutes before serving.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Turkey + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

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, supplying the meat that is sliced and gently warmed.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream and sauce into a smooth, rich finish when stirred in gently.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cucumbers as they stew.
White sauce
Coats the turkey slices, giving moisture and a creamy body to the dish.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Once the egg yolk is stirred into the cream, boiling can curdle the mixture and make the sauce grainy instead of smooth. Keeping the heat low lets the yolk thicken it gradually.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, mace, ham, white pepper, nutmeg, cream, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, mace, ham, white pepper, nutmeg, cream, egg. 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

Turkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipesTurkey DressingTurkey Dressing24 recipesTurkey PattiesTurkey Patties12 recipes