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Turkey Hash

A creamy turkey hash served on buttered toast, seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and optional parsley or green pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turkey Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a hot saucepan, rub together the flour and butter.

  2. Add the cream and milk, stirring until it comes to a boil.

Cook the hash

  1. Stir in the chopped turkey and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

  3. For variation, add chopped parsley or green pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the hash on slices of hot buttered toast.

  2. Optionally, transfer to a baking dish, sprinkle with grated cheese and butter, and bake.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the cream and milk into a smooth, spoonable sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps the flour blend in smoothly without lumps.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce that holds the turkey.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, thickened by the flour.
Leftover turkey
Provides the main protein, cooked and chopped fine to blend into the sauce.

The step that matters

Rubbing the flour and butter together in the hot saucepan. Cooking flour in fat before adding liquid coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly. Without this, the sauce can turn lumpy or taste raw and floury.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, cream, milk, turkey, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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