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A Second-day Turkey

A reheated turkey covered in ham slices, baked with gravy or stock and butter, then served with the ham strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and chicken work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

A Second-day Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the whole side of the turkey with thick slices of boiled cold ham.

  2. Bind the ham slices in place with cotton twine or narrow tapes.

  3. Place the turkey, ham side up, in a covered roaster.

Make the gravy base

  1. If you have leftover gravy, thin it with boiling water. Strain the thin gravy.

  2. Pour the strained gravy around the turkey.

  3. If you do not have leftover gravy, use stock or boiling water with butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the roaster.

  2. Cook gently for 1 hour, basting four times.

  3. Fifteen minutes before serving, remove the strings. Take off the ham and keep the ham warm.

  4. If the turkey is not brown, dredge it with flour. Baste the turkey again.

  5. Close the oven to brown the turkey.

  6. Cut the ham into strips. Arrange the ham strips around the turkey when serving.

  7. Strain the gravy. Thicken the gravy if necessary. Boil the gravy before serving in a gravy boat.

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. Turkey + chickentop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

  4. Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

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

  5. Turkey + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

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

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked gently in the covered roaster.
Ham
Covers the turkey and adds savoury, salty flavour as it cooks.
Gravy or stock
Provides moisture and liquid around the turkey, keeping it from drying out.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stock or boiling water used when no gravy is left.
Flour
Dredging helps the turkey surface brown and gives the gravy body when thickened.

The step that matters

Basting and the final browning. Basting keeps the surface moist while the turkey cooks gently. Dredging with flour and closing the oven then browns the skin, so it needs attention before serving.

“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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