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Turkey Blanquette

A creamy sauce made from turkey, stock, butter, flour, egg yolk, cream, and spices, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Turkey Blanquette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the turkey into neat slices and set aside.

  2. Put bones, trimmings, onion, mace, salt, and pepper into a saucepan and cover with cold water.

  3. Simmer gently for at least 1 hour, then strain the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat butter in a saucepan and add flour.

  2. Cook for a few minutes without browning.

  3. Add stock to the flour mixture and stir until boiling.

  4. Simmer gently for about 10 minutes.

  5. Season to taste and add a pinch of nutmeg.

Finish and serve

  1. Add turkey slices and heat until hot but do not boil.

  2. Mix cream or milk with yolk of egg, add to the saucepan, and stir gently for about 5 minutes before serving.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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
Provides the main meat, which is gently heated through in the sauce rather than boiled.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce once cooked briefly in the butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it savoury flavour.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce when combined with cream and gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Add the egg and cream mixture without boiling. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat; if the sauce boils after it is added, the yolk can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, butter, flour, egg, cream, mace, nutmeg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, flour, egg, cream, mace, nutmeg. 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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