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Blanquette of Turkey

A creamy turkey stew made with stock, butter, flour, lemon, cream, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Blanquette of Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth but not browned.

  3. Pour in the white stock and cook for 2 minutes.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and add the cream.

Finish and serve

  1. Once it boils, add the turkey and cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with 4 tablespoons of milk and stir into the mixture.

  3. Cook for about 30 seconds longer 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour 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

Turkey
Provides the cooked meat that the sauce coats and carries.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flour to form the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, cohesive sauce when cooked briefly with butter.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and supplies savory flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the sauce boils after they go in, the proteins can scramble and curdle, so keep the heat low once they are stirred in.

“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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