Name: Hashed Turkey or Chicken
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon flour; ½ pint water; 2 tablespoons ketchup; pepper to taste; cooked turkey or chicken, shredded; for the gravy: 1 pint cold water; 1 teaspoon flour; minced beef; salt to taste

Why it works: Turkey and beef work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 248 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Hashed Turkey or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

In a pan, blend 1 tablespoon of flour and stir until it turns a light brown.
Add ½ pint of water, 2 tablespoons of ketchup, and pepper; bring to a boil.
Stir in the shredded turkey or chicken and heat until hot throughout.
Turn the mixture out onto a hot dish.
For the gravy, boil minced beef in 1 pint of cold water for 10 minutes.
Mix 1 teaspoon of flour with a little cold water, then add to the boiling gravy.
Strain the gravy and serve it around the hashed meat.

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.

Turkey + beeftop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together248 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,435 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper + turkeytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,636 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).