tetrazzini — United States

Tetrazzini is a baked pasta dish in which diced poultry or seafood is folded into a butter-and-cream sauce flavored with sherry, then combined with pasta and finished under the oven's heat until the top browns. The sauce is usually built like a light béchamel or velouté rather than a tomato base, which gives the dish its pale, creamy appearance. It belongs to Italian-American cooking and is reported across the United States, where it appears on home and restaurant menus as a way to use leftover roast chicken or turkey, and in coastal regions as a seafood version with shrimp or crab. The dish is commonly linked to early twentieth-century American kitchens and is said to take its name from an opera singer of the period, though the exact circumstances of its creation are not settled. To prepare it, cooked poultry or seafood is combined with sautéed mushrooms and a sauce made from butter, flour, stock, and cream or milk, loosened with a splash of sherry or white wine. This is tossed with cooked pasta — usually spaghetti, linguine, or egg noodles — spread in a dish, topped with grated cheese and often breadcrumbs, and baked until the surface turns golden. Cooks differ mainly on the protein used, chicken, turkey, shrimp, or crab all appearing depending on region and season, and on the sauce base, some preferring a mornay-style cheese sauce and others a plainer cream reduction. The wine used also varies between dry sherry and white wine, and the topping ranges from cheese alone to a mix of cheese and breadcrumbs.