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My Mother's Turkey Hash

A savory dish of cooked turkey, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes simmered with cream and butter, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

My Mother's Turkey Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the creamed turkey

  1. In a saucepan, combine chopped turkey, mushroom liquor, sweet cream, butter, salt, and pepper. Heat the mixture for 5 to 10 minutes and serve over fried bread or toast.

Make the hash

  1. For the hash, cook onions in a skillet with a little water until tender.

  2. Add chopped tomatoes, meat, and potatoes to the skillet and season with salt, pepper, and sage if desired.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with cream and pour over the mixture in the skillet. Let it scald gently, then serve on a hot platter garnished with cress or parsley.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks beaten with cream bind the hash and enrich it as they gently set.
Potatoes
Cooked potatoes add body and starch that holds the hash together.
Sweet cream
Cream adds richness and a smooth, moist texture to the turkey.
Turkey
Cooked turkey is the main protein that gives both dishes their meaty base.

The step that matters

Letting the egg mixture scald gently. Egg yolks thicken and can curdle or turn grainy if overheated, so the mixture should warm slowly rather than boil.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, mushroom, cream, butter, pepper, bread, meat):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, mushroom, cream, butter, pepper, bread, meat. 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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