Skip to main content
Dessert

Forced Turkeys’ Eggs

A custard made from boiled turkey eggs, butter, salt, nutmeg, cayenne, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Forced Turkeys’ Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

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

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

  3. When completely cool, roll the eggs in a cloth, pressing lightly to crack the shells. Carefully remove the shells and halve the eggs lengthwise.

Make the filling

  1. Remove the yolks and pound them to a smooth paste in a mortar with butter, salt, nutmeg, cayenne, and mace.

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 + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Turkeys’ eggs
Provide the whites for structure and the yolks that form the rich, creamy filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the yolk paste turn smooth and silky.

The step that matters

Cooling the eggs before peeling. Eggs must be fully cool before cracking and peeling, otherwise the whites tear and the shells stick. Changing the water keeps the eggs cooling evenly and prevents a sulfurous green ring from forming on the yolks.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes