Not Chicken Or Beef — The Comforting Pasta Casserole Everyone Ate In The '60s And '70s Was Made With This Meat

If ever there was a golden age of casseroles, it shone brightest during the 1960s and '70s. Those were the days when the combination of tuna and noodles truly got its due and when even cheeseburgers got the deep-dish treatment. And one 20th-century favorite turned to a different protein for half of its name: turkey Tetrazzini.

Turkey Tetrazzini was, and, theoretically still is, made with the titular bird, plus spaghetti (or sometimes another variety), mushrooms, peas, a few kinds of cheese, plenty of seasonings, and a breadcrumb crust for a creamy, crisp finish. It is named for the 1900s opera singer Luisa Tetrazzini, who is said to have created, or at least inspired the dish. Given turkey Tetrazzini's conduciveness to adaptation, it's almost as though anyone can create a totally new one on any given day. And you can look to even more ingredients that were particularly popular in the 1960s and '70s to make this throwback your own, or just use turkey Tetrazzini as a tasty way to repurpose the leftovers in your own home.

This casserole is so flexible that you can actually make "turkey" Tetrazzini with chicken, if that's what you've got clucking around. You can also use the crunchy topping of your preference like panko instead of standard breadcrumbs, and exchange the veggies for any oven-friendly kinds you have on hand like broccoli or asparagus. If you can bake it and make it taste great, whatever ingredient you have in mind will likely be fine. You can even swap the long noodles with practically any dried pasta.

The egg noodles that were also seemingly ubiquitous in the '60s and '70s, for example (maybe because of all of those casseroles), are still tops in today's turkey Tetrazzinis. You can also use some cream of mushroom soup like the condensed kinds that appeared in so many retro casseroles in lieu of what's often a Tetrazzini's cream-based sauce for even more throwback flair. And for a crispy topping, why not consider something like the French's fried onions that have famously topped the all-American green bean casserole for decades, as the crowning touch.