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Fricasseed Turkey

A stew of cold turkey pieces simmered with herbs, onion, lemon peel, and water, finished with cream and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricasseed Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut nice slices from the cold turkey and place the bones and trimmings in a stewpan.

  2. Add the lemon peel, herbs, onion, salt, pepper, and water; stew for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the gravy and return the turkey pieces to the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. When warmed through, add the cream and egg yolk, stirring well until thickened.

  2. Optionally, add boiled celery or cucumber to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Remove the turkey pieces and place them on a serving dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the turkey and garnish with toasted bread snippets.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Cold turkey
Provides the meat, while the bones and trimmings add savoury body to the gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it gently heats, setting into a creamy coating.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness to the stewed gravy base.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat. If the sauce gets too hot or boils, the yolk can scramble and curdle, so stir well over low heat until it just thickens.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, lemon, pepper, cream, egg):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, lemon, pepper, 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.

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