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Hashing Poultry and Game

A dish of turkey and game pieces simmered in gravy, thickened with flour and butter, finished with egg yolks and cream, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hashing Poultry and Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Cut the turkey into pieces and remove the skin to avoid a greasy taste.

  2. Place the turkey in a stew pan with gravy, lemon pickle, a slice of lemon, and beaten mace.

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

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

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

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

Serve

  1. Serve with sippets around 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  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 + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender when gently simmered in the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in the butter and liquid.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and helps the flour blend smoothly into a thickened base.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce through their proteins when heated gently.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk and cream mixture without boiling. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so boiling can curdle the sauce into a grainy texture. Heat gently and keep the gravy below a simmer.

Swap the mace

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

  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, pepper. 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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