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Turkct, Hashed

A shredded turkey dish simmered in a butter‑flour gravy with stock, onion, mace, peppercorns, and caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Turkct, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Divide the turkey into small neat pieces and set aside.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the bones and trimmings with a small onion, a blade of mace, a few peppercorns, and a little salt. Simmer gently for about 2 hours, then strain the stock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, and add the stock. Stir until boiling, then let the sauce boil gently for about 10 minutes to cook the flour.

  2. Season the sauce to taste, add the turkey pieces, and reduce heat to just below simmering for about 30 minutes.

  3. Before serving, add a few drops of caramel to improve the sauce's color.

Serve

  1. Garnish with toasted bread slices or a border of mashed potatoes.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Remains of cold roast turkey
Forms the main body of the hash, supplying the meat that is gently heated in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and with the flour forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce when cooked with the butter.
Turkey stock
Provides the liquid and savory flavor that makes the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the sauce. Boiling the flour and stock together for the full time cooks out the raw starchy taste and lets the starch thicken properly. Stopping early leaves the sauce pasty and floury.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, flour, pepper, onion. 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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