Skip to main content
Main

Devilled Turkey

A seasoned turkey leg dish cooked with mustard, chutney, oil, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and gravy or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Devilled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. In a bowl, combine the mustard, chutney, salad oil, salt, and pepper.

  2. Mix in Worcestershire sauce and a little gravy or water to form a soft paste.

Cook

  1. Coat the turkey legs with the paste.

  2. Cook the turkey legs until fully cooked and serve.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey legs
Provide the meat that is cooked and served.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the deviled flavor.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the mustard.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries the seasonings and keeps the meat moist.

The step that matters

Cook the turkey legs until fully cooked. Raw poultry must reach a fully cooked internal temperature to be safe to eat. The record gives no temperature or time, so the cook has to check doneness directly, for example with a food thermometer, rather than rely on appearance alone.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, pepper, sauce. 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.

More deviled turkey recipes

Legs 6Leg 3 See all 20 →

You might also like

Turkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipesTurkey DressingTurkey Dressing24 recipesTurkey PattiesTurkey Patties12 recipes