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Turkey Pudding

A savory pudding made with minced onions, soaked bread crumbs, chopped turkey, egg yolks, cream or butter, and spices, stuffed in sausage casings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Turkey Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix minced onions with soaked bread crumbs.

  2. Chop cold turkey and combine with the onion and bread mixture.

  3. Pound the mixture well in a mortar and pass it through a colander.

  4. Return the mixture to the mortar, heat it, and gradually add egg yolks and cream or butter.

  5. Season with salt, mace, and nutmeg to taste.

Fill and cook

  1. Fill cleaned sausage casings with the mixture and tie the ends.

  2. Simmer the puddings without boiling, then drain and let cool.

  3. To cook, prick with a fork, wrap in buttered paper, and broil on a gridiron.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + turkeytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + turkeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together281 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main body and savoury meat flavour of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they add moisture and a soft, tender texture to the filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm and smooth when heated.
Cream or butter
Adds richness and moisture, giving the filling a smoother, softer texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavour as they cook into the filling.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Boiling the casings can split the egg and cream mixture and make the filling tough and rubbery, so it should only simmer gently until set.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, turkey, egg, cream, mace, nutmeg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, turkey, egg, cream, mace, nutmeg. 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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