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To Stew a Turkey Brown

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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

  1. Fill the turkey breast with forcemeat and place an anchovy, shallot, and thyme inside the belly.

  2. Lard the breast with bacon.

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

  4. Transfer the turkey to a deep stew pan and add enough gravy to barely cover it.

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

  6. Cover and stew for 1 hour, then remove the turkey and keep it warm.

  7. Boil the sauce until reduced to about 1 pint, strain it, and mix in the egg yolks and butter rolled in flour.

  8. Stir until thick, then place the turkey in a dish and pour the sauce over it.

  9. Prepare French loaves by cutting off the tops, removing the crumbs, and frying until golden brown.

  10. Fill the loaves with stewed oysters and arrange them around the turkey, garnishing with lemon.

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

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, anchovy, shallot, thyme, butter, flour, white wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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