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The Breakfast Book

A baked turkey pie or terrine made with forcemeat, bacon fat, and optional chestnuts and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and chestnut work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 136 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

The Breakfast Book

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter the turkey and bake it for a short time in the oven.

  3. Prepare a forcemeat using liver, veal or poultry, oysters, spices, marrow, and mushroom powder.

  4. Once the turkey is cold, cut it up.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make a raised pie with the turkey, surrounded by forcemeat and thin slices of bacon fat, or place it in a terrine without paste.

  2. If making an ordinary pie, boil down the bones and giblets until there is enough gravy to pour into the dish.

  3. You can keep the turkey whole if preferred and use meat from pullets or rabbit backs to fill it.

  4. Optionally, add yolks of hard-boiled eggs.

  5. Bake the raised pie for two hours or the ordinary pie for one hour.

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 + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Turkey + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + livertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main meat filling, providing the bulk and savory flavor of the pie.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the turkey brown and stay moist in the oven.
Forcemeat
Adds a rich, seasoned meat layer that keeps the filling moist and flavorful around the turkey.
Bacon fat
Bastes the filling with fat, adding savory flavor and moisture during baking.
Hard-boiled eggs
Adds richness and body to the filling through the yolks.

The step that matters

Cutting the turkey once it is cold. Carving while the turkey is still warm makes the meat crumble and dry out, so it should cool fully before it is cut into pieces for the pie.

Swap the chestnut

The recipe marks chestnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, butter, liver, egg):

  1. Chestnutthe original
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Almondfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, liver, egg. 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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