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Cream Sauce for Boiled Turkey

A creamy sauce made with turkey broth, butter, flour, milk, celery, and salt, served over 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 milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Sauce for Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the turkey broth in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the butter and flour together.

  3. Stir in the boiled milk.

  4. Add salt to taste.

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut the celery into 4‑inch pieces.

  2. Boil the celery for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the boiled celery to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Slice the boiled turkey breast.

  2. Pour the sauce over the sliced turkey 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Turkey + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together281 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

  5. Turkey + celerytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 broth
Forms the liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the sauce.
Celery
Contributes vegetable flavour and a tender texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the boiled milk. Adding milk to a hot butter and flour mixture can cause lumps if it is not whisked in steadily. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, flour, milk. 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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