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Turkey Legs Stuffed with Sweetbread

Turkey legs stuffed with a mushroom, bacon, and herb mixture, simmered in broth and wine, finished with orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Turkey Legs Stuffed with Sweetbread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the bones from the turkey legs, leaving a small piece at the end for presentation.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the diced mushrooms, grated bacon, minced parsley, onions, shallot, sweet basil, coarse pepper, and egg yolks. Mix the ingredients well.

  3. Stuff the turkey legs with the mixture and sew them up securely.

Stew and finish

  1. In a pot, combine the stuffed turkey legs with the broth, white wine, parsley, and a little salt.

  2. Cover the legs with bacon slices and stew over low heat.

  3. Skim off excess sauce.

  4. Remove the bacon and parsley.

  5. Add cullis.

  6. Thicken with egg yolk.

  7. Serve with a squeeze of orange juice just before serving.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey legs
Provide the main meat, which is stuffed, then becomes tender during slow stewing.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce into a smooth, creamy consistency when stirred in.
Bacon
Adds savory fat and smoky flavor to the filling and as a cover over the legs.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the stuffing.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken with egg yolk. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Stir in off the boil and keep the heat low.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, mushroom, parsley, shallot, basil, pepper, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, mushroom, parsley, shallot, basil, pepper, 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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