Why it works: Turkey and bread work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 822 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Turkey Soup, Superior
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the turkey
Remove the meat from the turkey and mince it finely.
Pound the minced turkey until smooth and set aside.
Break the turkey body into small pieces and place in a stewpan with 2 quarts of white stock.
Simmer gently for 1.5 hours.
Strain the stock, let it cool, skim off the fat, and season with salt and cayenne.
Make the soup
Cut the stale bread into thin slices and soak in the stock until absorbed.
Simmer the soaked bread for a few minutes, then squeeze it dry in a cloth.
Mix the dry bread pulp with the minced turkey and gradually add the strained stock until smooth.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon.
Bring the soup to a boil, adjust seasoning, and add 1 pint of boiling cream or milk just before serving.
If the soup is too thin, mix 1 ounce of arrowroot or ground rice with a little cold milk and boil it in the soup before adding the cream.
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.
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Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together822 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together329 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,636 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Bread + arrowroottop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together101 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Turkey
- Provides the main body of meat and flavour for the soup.
- White stock
- Forms the liquid base that carries the turkey flavour through the soup.
- Stale bread
- Soaks up stock and, once pulped, thickens the soup to a smooth body.
- Cream or milk
- Adds richness and a silky texture when stirred in just before serving.
- Arrowroot or ground rice
- Thickens the soup if it is too thin.
The step that matters
Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the pulp through a fine sieve breaks down remaining fibres and lumps, giving the smooth texture the soup depends on. Skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy soup.
Swap the arrowroot
The recipe marks arrowroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, pepper, bread, cream):
- Capsicumfits better
- Tomatofits better
- Spinachfits better
- Arrowrootthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pepper, bread, 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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