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Turkey Warmed Over

A dish of warmed turkey or chicken served with gravy and biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Turkey Warmed Over

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Warm the meat

  1. In a frying pan, warm the pieces of turkey or chicken with 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Place the warmed turkey on a warm platter.

  3. Surround the turkey with thick slices of bread or halved biscuits dipped in hot salted water.

Make the gravy

  1. In the same frying pan, add 2 tablespoons of butter, 1 to 2 cups of milk, and any leftover gravy.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add enough flour, mixed with a little cold milk or water, to achieve a cream-like consistency.

  4. Season the gravy with salt, pepper, and finely chopped dark meat.

  5. Let the gravy cook for a few minutes.

  6. Pour the gravy over the biscuits and 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 + 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Thickens the milk and gravy into a smooth, cream-like sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the meat and the milk gravy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream gravy.
Bread or biscuits
Soaks up the gravy and serves as the base under the turkey.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour thickens only when it is evenly dispersed and heated; mixing it with a little cold liquid first prevents lumps, and the gravy must cook a few minutes so the starch fully thickens and loses its raw taste.

“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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