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Patties From Cold Turkey or Chickens

A puff pastry-wrapped patty made from minced turkey or chicken, ham, gravy, cream, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Patties From Cold Turkey or Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the white meat from the turkey or chicken and mix it with a little grated ham.

  2. Stew the mixture in good gravy or melted butter.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of cream and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and mace.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out the puff pastry and cut it into shapes.

  2. Place the meat mixture on the pastry and cover with another piece of pastry.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

White meat from cooked turkey or chicken
Provides the main filling, giving substance and a savoury meaty flavour.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that puffs and browns in the oven around the filling.
Grated ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the mild poultry filling.
Good gravy or melted butter
Stewing in gravy or butter keeps the meat moist and adds richness.
1 tablespoon cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Stewing the meat in gravy or butter. Gently stewing keeps the minced meat moist; overcooking or boiling it hard toughens its proteins and dries the filling, so it turns out dry inside the pastry.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, butter, cream, pepper. 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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