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Mock Boned Turkey

A veal leg stuffed with pork, beef, tongue, and sausage, then boiled and served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Mock Boned Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bone from the leg of veal.

  2. Fill the cavity with pieces of fresh pork, beef, tongue, and sausage.

  3. Wrap the filled leg in a cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil until tender.

  2. Cool and serve with currant jelly.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Beef + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Pork + curranttop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of veal
Forms the outer shell that wraps and holds the filling together during cooking.
Fresh pork
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing as it cooks.
Beef
Adds savory, meaty flavour and body to the filling.
Tongue
Contributes rich, tender texture and depth of flavour to the filling.
Sausage
Adds seasoned flavour and fat to the stuffing.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the rich, savory meat.

The step that matters

Wrap the filled leg in a cloth. The cloth must hold the stuffed leg firmly in shape while it boils, so the filling does not escape or loosen. A snug, even wrap keeps the meat compact and helps it cook evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, beef):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, beef. 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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