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Dessert

Forced Turkeys’ Eggs

A custard made from boiled turkey eggs, mashed yolks mixed with butter, salt, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Forced Turkeys’ Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the eggs

  1. Boil the turkey eggs gently in plenty of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Transfer the eggs to a large pan of cold water to cool, changing the water once or twice.

  3. Once cooled, roll the eggs in a cloth to break the shells and remove them.

Prepare the custard

  1. Halve the eggs lengthwise and carefully take out the yolks.

  2. Pound the yolks in a mortar with butter, salt, nutmeg, and cayenne until smooth.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Turkey + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together257 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

Turkey eggs
Provide the yolks, which set and thicken the custard into a rich, smooth mass.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the yolk mixture a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Pound the yolks until smooth. Working the yolks with butter in a mortar breaks them down and emulsifies the fat into them, so the mixture becomes smooth rather than grainy or lumpy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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

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