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Turkey a LA Bechamel

A turkey dish simmered in béchamel sauce with herbs, cream, and lemon, served over noodles, rice, or toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turkey a LA Bechamel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the turkey into small pieces.

  2. Crack the bones.

  3. Place the bones in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, and add the onion.

  4. Boil for 1 hour.

  5. Strain the broth through a napkin.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir for a few minutes.

  3. Add the turkey broth, salt, peppercorns, and bouquet of herbs.

  4. Cook for 6 minutes.

  5. Strain the sauce into a clean saucepan.

  6. Add the cream or milk and nutmeg.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the fine-cut turkey meat.

  2. Let it simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the lemon juice.

  4. Serve on a hot dish with noodles, rice timbales, croutons, or over toast.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 meat
Provides the main body of the dish and is gently warmed through in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a smooth sauce structure when cooked briefly.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and smooth flavor to the sauce.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, giving the béchamel its smooth, rich texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the melted butter. Flour must be stirred into the butter and cooked for a few minutes to remove its raw taste and form a smooth roux. Adding liquid too early or without stirring can leave lumps, so the sauce will not thicken evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, onion, butter, flour, cream, nutmeg, meat. 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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