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Escalloped Turkey

A baked dish of layered bread crumbs and turkey, topped with a thickening of eggs, milk, butter, and crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Escalloped Turkey

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the dish

  1. Moisten the bread crumbs with a little milk.

  2. Butter a pan and add a layer of crumbs.

  3. Add a layer of chopped cold turkey seasoned with salt and pepper.

  4. Repeat layers until the pan is full, adding any leftover dressing or gravy.

Top and bake

  1. Make a thickening by mixing 2 eggs, ½ cup milk, ¼ cup butter, and some bread crumbs; season.

  2. Spread the thickening over the top.

  3. Cover with a lid and bake for 30 minutes, then uncover to 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + turkeytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + turkeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together281 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the thickening topping and help it set into a custard-like layer.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and form the soft, absorbent layers that hold the dish together.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and turkey and forms the liquid in the thickening.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown when uncovered.

The step that matters

Covering, then uncovering to brown. Baking covered first traps steam so the eggs and milk set gently without drying out. Uncovering at the end lets the surface brown through dry heat, as the Maillard reaction needs.

“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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