Skip to main content
Main

Ragout of Cold Duck or Turkey

A ragout made from cold duck or turkey, flavored with cayenne pepper, mustard, tomato sauce, onion, and thickened with brown flour.

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

Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ragout of Cold Duck or Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the remains of cold duck, turkey, or chicken.

  2. Make a little stock using the bones.

  3. Flavor the stock with cayenne pepper, mustard, and tomato sauce.

  4. Chop the onion into small pieces.

  5. Fry the chopped onion in boiling fat or butter.

Make the ragout

  1. Mix the fried onion with the stock and thicken with brown flour.

  2. When boiling, add the pieces of cold meat.

  3. After slightly browning, pour the mixture over the meat and let it simmer for 15 minutes until thoroughly warm.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brown flour
Thickens the stock into a rich sauce as it cooks.
Boiling fat or butter
Fries the onion, carrying flavor and helping it brown.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and savory depth to the stock.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the rich meat.
Bones from the meat
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the homemade stock.

The step that matters

Thickening with brown flour. Flour must be stirred into the hot stock and simmered so its starch swells fully; added to cold liquid or left unstirred it clumps and leaves a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, pepper, mustard, sauce, onion, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, pepper, mustard, sauce, onion, butter. 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

Meatless Tomato SoupMeatless Tomato Soup23 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipes