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Turkey Warmed Over

A dish of cold turkey or chicken warmed with gravy and butter, served over bread or biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turkey Warmed Over

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Warm pieces of cold turkey or chicken in a frying pan with butter.

  2. Place the warmed turkey on a warm platter and surround with bread or biscuit slices dipped in hot salted water.

  3. Put the platter in a warm oven with the door open.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt butter in the frying pan.

  2. Add milk and leftover gravy; bring to a boil.

  3. Mix flour with a little cold milk or water to thicken the gravy to a cream consistency.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and add finely chopped dark meat.

  5. Cook the sauce for a few moments, then pour over the biscuit and turkey.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Thickens the milk and gravy into a smooth cream-like sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when warming the meat and starting the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Leftover gravy
Supplies savory meaty flavor to the sauce.
Bread or biscuits
Soaks up the hot salted water and the sauce, giving a soft base under the turkey.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold liquid before adding it to the hot sauce; added directly, it clumps and stays lumpy. Once blended, the starch thickens as the sauce heats.

“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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