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To Stew a Turkey Brown

A stew of a whole turkey browned and simmered in gravy with wine, herbs, and a beurre manié sauce.

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

Prepare the turkey

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

  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.

Stew and make the sauce

  1. Pour in white wine and add whole pepper, mace, cloves, and sweet herbs.

  2. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the turkey and keep it warm, covered.

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

  5. Whisk in egg yolks and butter rolled in flour until thickened.

Serve

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

  2. If desired, prepare small French loaves, fry them until golden, fill with stewed oysters, and arrange around the turkey.

  3. Garnish 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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main body of the dish, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Forcemeat (stuffing)
Fills the breast skin, adding savoury flavour and moisture to the meat as it cooks.
Bacon
Larding adds fat that bastes the lean breast meat and adds savoury flavour during cooking.
Flour
Browns in the butter to colour the turkey and thickens the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the strained sauce as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisk in egg yolks and butter rolled in flour until thickened. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce boils. Keep the heat low and whisk constantly so the sauce becomes smooth and lightly thick.

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.

“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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