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Turkey, Hashed

A savory dish of leftover roast turkey simmered in a butter‑flour sauce with stock, seasoned and finished with caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Turkey, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

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

  2. In a saucepan, combine the bones and trimmings with a small onion, a bay leaf, a few peppercorns, and a little salt. Simmer gently for 2 hours, then strain the stock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pot, stir in the flour, and gradually add the stock while stirring until boiling.

  2. Let the sauce boil gently for about 10 minutes to cook the flour thoroughly, then season to taste.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the pieces of turkey, reduce heat, and let it simmer just below boiling for about 30 minutes.

  2. Before serving, enhance the color of the sauce with a few drops of caramel.

  3. Garnish with toasted bread sippets 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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
Provides the main meat and substance of the hash, becoming tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Melted with flour to form the roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce when cooked with the melted butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavour from the turkey bones and trimmings.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the sauce. Boiling the roux-thickened sauce gently for about 10 minutes cooks out the raw starchy taste of the flour and lets the starch fully thicken the liquid. Skipping this leaves the sauce pasty and floury tasting.

“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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