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Devilled Turkey

A turkey dish with a pepper vinegar, mustard, celery sauce, and fruit jelly glaze, topped with pounded crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Devilled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the turkey

  1. Place the jointed legs and wings on a grill and broil slowly.

  2. Lay the broiled turkey on a hot dish.

Make and serve the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix pepper vinegar, mustard, celery sauce, fruit jelly, salt, and pepper to make the sauce.

  2. Pour the sauce over the turkey.

  3. Sprinkle pounded cracker on top.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 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 and wings
Provide the main meat, which browns and firms as it broils slowly.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and emulsifying body to the tangy sauce.
Fruit jelly
Adds sweetness and body that balances the sharp vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Broiling the turkey slowly. Slow heat lets the joints cook through and brown gradually. Too fast a heat would char the outside before the meat near the bone is done.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, pepper, vinegar, mustard, sauce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pepper, vinegar, mustard, sauce. 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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