Skip to main content
Main

Turkey Warmed Over

A dish of warmed turkey or chicken served with bread or biscuits and a creamy gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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

  2. Place the warmed meat on a warm platter.

  3. Dip the bread or biscuit slices in hot salted water and arrange them around the meat.

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

Make the sauce

  1. In the frying pan, melt the butter, then add milk and any leftover gravy.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Whisk in enough flour mixed with a little cold milk or water to achieve a cream-like consistency.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and stir in the finely chopped dark meat.

  5. Let the sauce cook for a few moments, then pour it over the biscuit and turkey.

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. Bread + milktop 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

Flour
Thickens the milk and gravy into a cream-like sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the pan and the sauce base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and creaminess.
Leftover gravy
Adds savoury depth and colour to the sauce.
Bread or biscuits
Soaked in hot salted water, they soften and make a base to hold the sauce and meat.

The step that matters

Whisking the flour into the boiling liquid. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not whisked in smoothly, so mixing it first with a little cold liquid and then whisking helps the starch disperse and thicken the sauce evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes