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Sauce

Sauce for a Boiled Turkey

A sauce made with oysters, mace, butter, flour, lemon, and cream for boiled turkey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sauce for a Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strain the liquor from the oysters and wash them in cold water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the oysters, mace, butter, and lemon, then boil gently.

  2. Add the cream and boil gently again.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the mace and lemon.

  2. Squeeze the lemon juice into the sauce.

  3. Serve the sauce in a bowl.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Oysters
Provide the main briny, savoury flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note while the sauce simmers.

The step that matters

Boil gently. Keep the heat low once the oysters and cream go in. Vigorous boiling toughens oysters and can cause cream to separate or curdle, spoiling the smooth texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, lemon, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, lemon, 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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