Skip to main content
Main

Turkey Scallop

A baked casserole of chopped turkey, bread crumbs, eggs, butter, and milk, topped with a crumb mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Turkey Scallop

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pick the meat from the bones of cold turkey and chop it fine.

  3. Layer bread crumbs in a buttered dish and moisten with a little milk.

Layer and top

  1. Add a layer of turkey and some filling, then place small pieces of butter on top. Sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt, then add another layer of bread crumbs.

  2. Repeat layers until the dish is nearly full.

  3. Add a little hot water to the leftover turkey gravy and pour it over the layers.

  4. In a bowl, mix 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons milk, 1 tablespoon melted butter, a little salt, and enough cracker crumbs to make a thick spread.

  5. Spread the mixture over the top and place bits of butter on it.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with a plate and bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Ten minutes before serving, remove the plate to let it brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold turkey meat
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it its substance and savory flavor.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and gravy to keep the layers moist and give the dish structure.
Eggs
Bind the cracker-crumb topping and help it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that moistens the layers and helps the top brown.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and adds softness to the custard-like topping.

The step that matters

Covering and removing the plate. Baking covered traps steam so the layers cook through and stay moist; uncovering near the end lets the surface dry and brown. Removing the cover too early can leave the top pale and dry.

“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.

More turkey scallop recipes

You might also like