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Sauce for a Boiled Turkey

A sauce made from oysters, mace, butter, flour, lemon, and cream for boiled turkey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sauce for a Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Set the oysters aside and strain their liquor.

  2. Wash the oysters in cold water and remove the gills.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the oysters with their liquor in a saucepan.

  2. Add the mace, butter, and flour to the saucepan.

  3. Squeeze the juice of the lemon into the mixture and add the lemon half.

  4. Boil gently, then stir in the cream and heat through.

  5. Remove the lemon and mace 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and texture of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Cream
Adds body, mellowness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the oysters.

The step that matters

Boil gently, then stir in the cream and heat through.. Once cream is added, boiling hard can cause it to separate and turn grainy. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth while it warms through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, lemon, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, lemon, 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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