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Hashing Poultry and Game

A turkey stew thickened with flour, butter, egg yolks, and cream, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Hashing Poultry and Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the turkey pieces to avoid greasy gravy.

  2. In a stew pan, combine turkey, gravy, lemon pickle, lemon slice, and beaten mace.

  3. Boil for 6‑7 minutes, then transfer to a serving dish.

Make the gravy

  1. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  2. Mix egg yolks with cream and add to the gravy, heating without boiling.

  3. Strain the gravy and pour it over the turkey.

Serve

  1. Serve with sippets and garnish with lemon or parsley.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 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

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that the gravy coats.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the turkey rather than running off.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and smooths the thickened gravy.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy as they set gently with heat, adding body.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk and cream mixture without boiling. Egg yolks begin to scramble and curdle when they get too hot. Heating the gravy gently lets the yolks thicken it smoothly instead of turning grainy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, lemon, flour, butter, egg, cream, bread. 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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