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To Use Left Over Chicken or Turkey

A casserole of leftover chicken or turkey with boiled potatoes, cream sauce, crushed crackers, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,756 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

To Use Left Over Chicken or Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble

  1. Layer the cold chicken or turkey and cold boiled potatoes in a baking dish.

  2. Cover the layers with cream sauce.

  3. Sprinkle the crushed crackers on top.

  4. Dot with bits of butter.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 30 minutes.

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. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Chicken or turkey
Provides the main protein and bulk of the casserole.
Boiled potatoes
Add starchy bulk and soften into the layers as they bake.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness that keeps the layers from drying out in the oven.
Crackers
Crushed on top, they brown and crisp during baking for a crunchy topping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the top brown as it melts.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cream, sauce, butter):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, sauce, butter. 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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