Skip to main content
Main

A Turkey

A turkey prepared with forcemeat, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt, served with a slice of liver.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turkey and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,636 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Carve the turkey

  1. Remove the gills from the turkey and carve slices from the breast.

  2. Take off the flesh from the wings.

  3. Carve the breast across without completely dividing it from the back.

  4. Remove the pinions and legs by cutting at the joints.

Prepare the gizzard and serve

  1. Score the gizzard and season it with cayenne and coarse sea salt before broiling.

  2. Serve a slice of liver with the 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. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Forcemeat
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the bird as it cooks, filling the cavity with a richer stuffing.

“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.

You might also like