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Turkey Warmed Over

A dish of warmed turkey or chicken served with a butter‑milk sauce and bread or biscuit slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turkey Warmed Over

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Warm pieces of turkey or chicken in a frying pan with butter.

  2. Place on a warm platter and surround with bread or biscuit slices dipped in hot salted water.

  3. Put the platter in a warm oven with the door open.

Make the sauce

  1. In the frying pan, add butter, milk, and any leftover gravy; bring to a boil.

  2. Add enough flour mixed with cold milk or water to achieve a cream-like consistency.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and add finely chopped dark meat.

  4. Cook the sauce for a few minutes, then pour over the biscuit and fowl.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and helps warm the turkey without drying it.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Flour
Thickens the milk and gravy into a cream-like sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Dark meat from turkey or chicken
Adds deeper flavor and moisture to the sauce because it is richer than white meat.
Bread or halved biscuits
Soaks up hot salted water and sauce, giving a soft base under the meat.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must be mixed with cold liquid first so it disperses evenly; added dry or to hot liquid it forms lumps. The sauce then needs a few minutes of simmering so the starch fully swells and the raw flour taste cooks off.

“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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