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Blanquette of Turkey

A creamy turkey stew made with a white sauce, cream, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Blanquette of Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut turkey into large thin slices.

  2. Place bones in a saucepan with parsley, thyme, bay leaf, onion, and bacon. Cover with water and boil gently for 45 minutes.

  3. Skim and strain the stock to make a white sauce.

Make the blanquette

  1. In a stewpan, place turkey and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Add enough white sauce to cover the turkey and warm gradually without boiling.

  3. Stir in cream or milk mixed with egg yolk until thick.

Serve

  1. Serve with snippets of toast.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main protein; slow gentle warming keeps the meat tender and moist.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream sauce as it warms, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.
White sauce
Coats the turkey and forms the body of the dish.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk mixture without boiling. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat; if the sauce boils, the yolk can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, parsley, thyme, pepper, nutmeg, sauce, cream):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, parsley, thyme, pepper, nutmeg, sauce, cream. 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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