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Turkey Hashed

A savory turkey hash simmered in a sauce of flour, butter, cream, veal gravy, lemon peel, spices, and optional oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Turkey Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix flour with butter until smooth.

  2. Stir in cream and veal gravy, and heat until it boils.

Finish the hash

  1. Add turkey pieces to the sauce.

  2. Mix in lemon peel, white pepper, mace, and mushroom powder or catsup.

  3. Simmer the mixture until heated through.

  4. If desired, add oysters and cook until they are just heated.

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. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + turkeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

  5. Veal + turkeytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce that coats the turkey.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Cream
Adds body and richness, making the sauce silky and mellow.
Veal gravy
Adds savory depth and meaty flavor to the sauce.
Cooked turkey
Forms the main body of the hash, absorbing the sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce until it boils. Flour only thickens fully when the sauce reaches a boil, so stop too early and the sauce stays thin and pasty-tasting.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, cream, veal, turkey, lemon, mace):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, cream, veal, turkey, lemon, mace. 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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