Skip to main content
Main

Salmis of Turkey

A turkey stew cooked with bacon, mushrooms, truffles, herbs, claret, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chervil and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmis of Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the sliced bacon at the bottom of a stewpan.

  2. Add the chopped mushrooms, truffles, parsley, chervil, and chives.

  3. Layer the turkey slices on top and season well with salt and pepper.

Stew and serve

  1. Pour the claret and water over the mixture until covered.

  2. Set the stewpan on moderate heat and let it stew until well cooked.

  3. Remove excess fat from the sauce and serve.

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. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat and flavour into the stew, seasoning the mushrooms and truffles below.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour as they release liquid while stewing.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, aromatic flavour that defines the dish.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth, helping build the braising liquid for the stew.

The step that matters

Remove excess fat from the sauce. Bacon releases a good deal of fat during stewing. Skimming it off before serving keeps the sauce from tasting greasy and helps it thicken into a cleaner, more balanced consistency.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, truffle, pepper, chervil, chive):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, truffle, pepper, chervil, chive. 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

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes