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Hashing Poultry and Game

A savory hash of turkey pieces simmered in gravy with lemon, mace, and spices, topped with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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

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

Make the gravy

  1. In a stew pan, combine turkey, gravy, lemon pickle, lemon slice, and beaten mace. Boil for 6-7 minutes.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

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

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

Serve

  1. Serve with sippets around the dish, garnished with lemon and 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
Forms the main body of the dish, and simmering in the gravy keeps it moist.
Gravy
Provides the savoury liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells with heat and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the thickened gravy.
Egg yolks
Enrich and further thicken the gravy as their proteins set gently with heat.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks set and curdle when overheated, which makes the gravy grainy. Heating the gravy gently, without boiling, keeps it smooth and evenly thickened.

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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