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Stuffed Chicken or Turkey Legs

A dish of chicken or turkey legs stuffed with a mixture of finely chopped meat, liver, pork larding, parsley, and egg, then baked and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Chicken or Turkey Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the legs

  1. Remove the tendons and bone from the chicken or turkey legs, leaving about 1.5 inches at the small end.

  2. Mix the chopped chicken or veal, liver, larding pork, salt, pepper, chopped parsley, and 1 egg.

  3. Stuff the legs with the mixture.

  4. Sew the skin over the end tightly to maintain shape.

Cook and cool

  1. Place the stuffed legs in a baking pan.

  2. Cover the legs with boiling water.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour or until tender.

  4. Remove the legs from the water.

  5. Press the legs into shape and let them cool.

  6. Once cool, remove the stitches.

Coat and serve

  1. Dredge the legs with salt and pepper.

  2. Optionally, rub the legs with mustard and red pepper before coating.

  3. Roll the legs in beaten egg and bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the legs in hot fat until browned, or broil for 4 minutes for chicken legs or 6 minutes for turkey legs.

  5. Serve the legs arranged like chops with the bones masked with paper frills, or flatten the legs to resemble cutlets.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or veal
Forms the lean, finely chopped filling that sets firm when cooked.
Liver
Adds richness and a deeper flavour to the stuffing.
Larding pork
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when sliced.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer coating when fried or broiled.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender, then cool before removing stitches. Simmering cooks the stuffed legs through gently, and cooling lets the set filling firm up so the legs keep their shape when the stitches are removed and they are coated.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, pork, pepper, egg, bread, butter):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, pork, pepper, egg, bread, butter. 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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