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Turkey on Toast

A dish of leftover turkey mixed with butter, herbs, and gravy, served atop toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Turkey on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Remove all the meat from the turkey bones and chop it finely.

Make the turkey mixture

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a saucepan.

  2. Add the minced shallot or onion and chopped parsley.

  3. Simmer until the onion is slightly colored.

  4. Pour in the hot water or cold gravy and heat until hot.

  5. Add the chopped turkey meat.

  6. Season with pepper and salt.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the bread slices and remove the crusts.

  2. Arrange the toast on a hot platter.

  3. Heap the turkey mixture on the toast.

  4. Serve.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish, carrying the flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the mixture.
Hot water or cold gravy
Supplies moisture so the chopped turkey becomes a saucy, spreadable heap.
Bread
Forms a crisp, absorbent base that holds the turkey mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer the shallot or onion until only slightly colored. Cooking onion gently until just colored softens its sharpness and builds sweetness. Browning it too far turns it bitter and can scorch the butter.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, parsley, pepper, bread. 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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