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Sauce for Boiled Turkey or Capon

A sauce made from oysters, butter, stale bread crumbs, new milk, celery, peppercorns, egg yolk, and cream, served with boiled turkey or capon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sauce for Boiled Turkey or Capon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Stuff the turkey or capon with raw oysters, fresh butter, and stale bread crumbs.

  2. Wrap the turkey in a clean cloth and place it in a saucepan of cold water.

  3. Boil over medium heat until fully cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine chopped celery, new milk, and black peppercorns; boil gently until reduced to 1 pint.

  2. Stir continuously until it thickens to a consistent pulp.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten egg yolk and fresh cream.

Serve

  1. Serve with strong veal gravy.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and adds richness when gently stirred in off the heat.
Fresh cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
New milk
Forms the base of the sauce, which thickens as it reduces.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the juices and oysters, adding body to the stuffing.
Raw oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce while it thickens. Constant stirring keeps the milk from scorching on the base of the pan and forming lumps. The egg yolk should be added off the heat, since high heat can curdle it.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, oyster, butter, bread, milk, egg, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, oyster, butter, bread, milk, egg, 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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