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Fricassee of Turkey

A stew of turkey pieces fried with butter and flour, in stock, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sweet herbs, served with turnips and potato chips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fricassee of Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Cut the remains of the turkey into pieces.

  2. Fry the turkey pieces in butter with a little flour.

  3. Moisten the turkey with stock.

  4. Add salt, pepper, and sweet herbs.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry turnips in butter until golden brown.

  2. Serve the turnips around the turkey.

  3. Add potato chips.

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. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Turkey remains
Provide the main meat, which is cut into pieces and browned in butter.
Butter
Browns the turkey and turnips and adds rich flavour to the fricassee.
Flour
Lightly coats the turkey pieces so the sauce thickens when stock is added.
Stock
Moistens the turkey and forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Turnips
Add sweetness and a golden, caramelised surface when fried in butter.

The step that matters

Fry the turkey pieces in butter with flour. Frying until lightly browned develops flavour through browning, and the flour coating must be cooked lightly so it thickens the stock smoothly instead of leaving a raw taste or lumps.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, butter, flour, pepper, potato chip):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, flour, pepper, potato chip. 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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