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Turkey Hash

A hash made from leftover turkey, water, seasonings, optional stuffing or flour, thickened with cream or milk, garnished with dry toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Turkey Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the remains of cold turkey into shreds or small square pieces.

  2. Place turkey in a stewpan with ½ pint of water and cover.

  3. Stew gently for a few minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Thicken the gravy with stuffing or flour if desired.

  3. For a richer flavor, add ½ cup of cream or ½ cup of milk mixed with 1 teaspoon of flour rubbed smooth with 1 ounce of butter.

  4. Add more milk or water if there isn't enough gravy.

Serve

  1. Garnish the dish with points of dry 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Remains of cold turkey
Provides the main protein and bulk of the hash, becoming tender as it stews.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps smooth the flour into the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the turkey rather than running thin.
Stuffing
Can thicken the gravy as an optional alternative to flour.

The step that matters

Rubbing the flour smooth with the butter before adding the milk or cream. Flour added directly to liquid can clump into lumps that do not dissolve. Blending it with fat first coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly and thicken the gravy smoothly.

“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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