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Turkey with Ragout

A boiled turkey served with a sweetbread ragout seasoned with lemon, cayenne, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Turkey with Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Stuff the turkey in the usual manner.

  2. Boil the stuffed turkey.

Make the ragout

  1. Prepare a ragout with throat sweetbreads and a liaison of 3 eggs.

  2. Simmer the ragout for 5 minutes.

  3. Season the ragout with coarse sea salt, lemon juice, and Cayenne pepper.

  4. Cut all the white meat off a cold turkey or fowl.

  5. Place the meat in a stewpan.

  6. Add a little cream, grated lemon peel, pounded mace, Cayenne pepper, salt, chopped shallot, and lemon juice.

  7. Thicken the mixture with flour and water.

  8. Simmer the stew for 10 minutes.

Broil and serve

  1. Score the legs and rump.

  2. Season the scored parts with pepper and salt.

  3. Broil until golden.

  4. Serve the broiled pieces over the turkey.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the ragout as a liaison, thickening it and giving it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the stew with starch, giving it body once it simmers.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the ragout.
Throat sweetbreads
Provide tender, delicate meat that gives the ragout its main texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy ragout.

The step that matters

Thicken the ragout with the egg liaison. Eggs thicken when gently heated but can scramble if the mixture boils. Keeping the ragout below a simmer while the liaison sets gives a smooth, creamy texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, egg, lemon, pepper, cream, shallot, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, egg, lemon, pepper, cream, shallot, flour. 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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