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Turkey, Devil Of, Dry

A dry deviled turkey seasoned with white pepper, salt, cayenne, lemon juice, and optional garlic, mustard, and butter or oil, then broiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Turkey, Devil Of, Dry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Score the turkey meat along and across at ¾ inch intervals, ¾ inch deep.

  2. Rub the seasoning mixture into the gashes: white pepper, salt, cayenne, lemon juice, and optional garlic.

  3. Cover the meat with mustard and brush with butter or oil.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil over a clear fire until brown and crisp, turning to cook evenly.

  2. Serve on a hot dish with small pieces of butter on top.

  3. Accompany with dry toast.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked turkey
Provides the meat that is scored, seasoned, and browned into a crisp surface.
Mustard
Coats the meat, adding sharp flavour that complements the spices and browns under heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced seasoning on the meat.
Butter or oil
Adds fat that helps the surface brown and crisp under the broiler.

The step that matters

Broil until brown and crisp, turning to cook evenly. The meat is already cooked, so the goal is only surface browning. Too little heat or time leaves it pale, while overexposure dries the thin pieces and burns the mustard and spices. Turning exposes all sides to even heat.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, white pepper, pepper, lemon, mustard, butter, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, white pepper, pepper, lemon, mustard, butter, garlic. 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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