Skip to main content
Main

Blanquette of Turkey

A creamy stew of turkey meat and stock seasoned with mace, nutmeg, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Blanquette of Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Chop the bones.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the bones, onion, mace, and ham or bacon.

  3. Cover the mixture with water.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes to make stock.

  5. Prepare a white sauce using the stock as directed in another recipe.

Make the blanquette

  1. Cut the turkey meat into small thin slices.

  2. In a stewpan, add the turkey slices.

  3. Cover the slices with a little of the sauce.

  4. Season with white pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Heat gently without boiling.

  6. Finish with cream mixed with the egg yolk. Stir quickly.

Prepare the optional cucumbers

  1. If using cucumbers, cut them into 2‑inch pieces.

  2. Peel the cucumbers. Remove the seeds.

  3. In a stewpan, combine cucumbers, chopped onions, butter, and sugar.

  4. Stew gently until tender.

  5. Add the cucumbers to the blanquette five minutes before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with triangular pieces of fried or toasted bread.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Turkey + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the cream into the sauce, giving a smooth, rich finish.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Turkey
Provides the main meat; gentle heating keeps the slices tender rather than tough.

The step that matters

Finish with cream mixed with the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated, but if the sauce boils it can curdle or scramble. Heat gently and stir quickly so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, mace, ham, white pepper, nutmeg, cream, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, mace, ham, white pepper, nutmeg, cream, egg. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes