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Devilled Turkey

A stewed turkey leg dish flavored with mustard and sauce piquante, served hot with hard‑boiled eggs and toasted bread garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and bread work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 822 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Devilled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Score and slash the turkey legs.

  2. Rub the mild mustard into the cuts.

  3. Drizzle the sauce piquante over the legs.

Cook and serve

  1. Stew the legs gently in the stock for 25 minutes.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with halved hard-boiled eggs and slices around the dish.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mustard + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Turkey + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey legs
Provide the meat that becomes tender during the slow stew.
Stock
Adds moisture and savoury body as the legs cook.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts the richness of the meat.
Sauce piquante
Adds pungent, spicy flavour that seasons the meat.

The step that matters

Stew the legs gently. Gentle simmering lets the connective tissue in the turkey break down slowly while the meat stays tender. Boiling hard tightens the muscle fibres and leaves the meat dry and tough.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, sauce, egg, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, sauce, egg, bread. 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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