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Pulled Turkey

Pulled turkey mixed with white gravy, heavy cream, nutmeg, salt, flour, butter, and served with 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. Warm the pulled meat in 1 to 2 tablespoons of white gravy and a little heavy cream.

Season and serve

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

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

  3. Place the broiled leg in 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
Lean meat that pulls apart into tender strands, forming the body of the dish.
White gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the pulled meat as it warms.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.
Flour
Starch thickens the liquid into a sauce that clings to the meat.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier texture in the sauce.
Turkey leg
Adds darker, richer meat with more flavour than the breast.

The step that matters

Add the flour and butter without boiling. Boiling a cream-based sauce can make it separate or turn grainy, and flour thickens best when heated gently and kept below a rolling boil so the sauce stays smooth.

“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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