Name: Hashed Turkey
Ingredients: remnants of turkey; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); pepper; butter; water

Why it works: Turkey and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,592 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Hashed Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the remnants of turkey into small pieces.
Remove the upper warty part of the neck and the head, but you may take the brains.

Cook

Melt butter in a pan and add the turkey pieces.
Season with coarse sea salt and pepper.
Add a little water and cook until heated through.

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.

Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,636 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey remnants: Provides the main protein, which becomes tender and warm as it cooks through.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping the turkey brown in the pan.

“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.