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Devilled Legs of Turkey

A seasoned turkey leg dish flavored with mustard, anchovy essence, cayenne sauce, and salad oil, then grilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,120 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Devilled Legs of Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the mustard, salad oil, essence of anchovies, and cayenne sauce in a bowl.

  2. Score the turkey legs with a knife.

  3. Rub the mixture into the scored legs.

Cook

  1. Cook the legs on a grill until crisp and brown, being careful not to burn them.

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. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + turkeytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Mustard + turkeytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

French mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps the spice mixture cling to the turkey.
Salad oil
Carries the other seasonings and keeps the surface from drying out while grilling.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a savoury, salty depth to the coating.
Cayenne sauce
Adds heat and pepper flavour to the coating.

The step that matters

Cook the legs on a grill until crisp and brown, being careful not to burn them.. Sugars and proteins on the surface brown well over steady heat, but the coating contains mustard and cayenne, which can scorch quickly over direct high heat. Watching the surface keeps the skin browned rather than charred while the meat cooks through.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, turkey):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, turkey. 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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