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Pulled Turkey

Pulled turkey mixed with white gravy, cream, nutmeg, salt, flour, butter, and a broiled turkey leg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pulled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Pull the meat from the turkey breast instead of cutting it.

  2. Season, score, and broil the turkey leg.

Make the sauce

  1. Warm the pulled meat in a spoonful or two of white gravy and ½ cup cream.

  2. Add ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg, ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt, 1 tablespoon flour, and 1 tablespoon butter; do not boil.

Serve

  1. Place the broiled leg into the dish with the pulled turkey.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 breast
Forms the main body of the dish as pulled meat that holds the sauce.
White gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the pulled meat while it warms.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the flour and butter without boiling. Flour thickens sauces best when cooked gently; boiling a cream-based sauce can cause it to break or turn grainy and can leave the flour tasting raw.

“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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