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To Stew a Turkey Brown

A stew of a whole turkey, larded with bacon, stuffed with force‑meat, anchovy, shallot, thyme, and herbs, simmered in wine and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Stew a Turkey Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill the turkey breast skin with force-meat and place an anchovy, shallot, and thyme inside the cavity.

  2. Lard the breast with bacon.

  3. Melt butter in a stewpan, dust the turkey with flour, and fry until golden brown.

Stew

  1. Transfer the turkey to a deep stewpan and add enough gravy to barely cover it.

  2. Pour in the white wine and add whole peppercorns, mace, cloves, and sweet herbs.

  3. Cover tightly and stew for 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the turkey and keep it warm, covered by the fire.

  2. Boil the sauce until reduced to about 1 pint, then strain it.

  3. Add the egg yolks and butter rolled in flour to the sauce, stirring until thick.

  4. Place the turkey on a dish and pour the sauce over it.

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. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Thyme + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,503 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Turkey + thymetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish; long gentle stewing keeps the meat tender and moist.
Bacon
Larded into the breast, it adds fat that keeps the lean meat moist and savoury during stewing.
Butter
Frying the floured turkey creates a golden brown crust and flavour.
Flour
Dusted on the turkey and used with butter to thicken the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the strained sauce as they set gently with heat.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, brown stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and butter to the sauce. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, so the sauce must be stirred off a hard boil; too much heat will scramble them and leave the sauce grainy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, anchovy, shallot, butter, flour, white wine):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, anchovy, shallot, butter, flour, white wine. 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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