Skip to main content
Main

Turkey, Devilled

Roasted turkey seasoned with devilled butter and grilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Turkey, Devilled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the butter, cayenne, black pepper, curry powder, and ginger on a plate to make the devilled butter.

  2. Cut the turkey into serving pieces, remove the skin, score the flesh deeply, and spread lightly with the devilled butter.

  3. Let the turkey sit for 1 hour or longer for a more seasoned flavor.

Cook and serve

  1. Grill the turkey pieces over the fire for about 8 minutes.

  2. Serve with piquant sauce or another suitable sauce.

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. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Turkey + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

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

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

Butter
Carries the spices and keeps the turkey moist and rich as it cooks.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that gives the devilled flavour its characteristic bite.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that season the turkey surface.
Ground ginger
Adds a subtle warm aroma that rounds out the spice blend.
Piquant sauce
Adds acidity and sharpness to balance the rich, spiced meat.

The step that matters

Spreading the devilled butter and resting the turkey. Scoring the flesh deeply lets the seasoned butter penetrate, and the rest period lets salt and spices move into the meat. Grilling over fire then browns the surface and the spices bloom in the heat.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Gingerthe 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.

You might also like

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