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Fowl or Turkey Pulled

A pulled fowl or turkey dish simmered with broth, mace, shallot, lemon, and spices, then broiled and served with legs and rump.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fowl or Turkey Pulled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Skin the cold chicken, fowl, or turkey.

  2. Remove the fillets from the breasts and place them in a stewpan with the rest of the white meat, wings, side bones, and merry-thought.

Make the sauce

  1. Add 2 cups of broth, pounded mace, minced shallot, lemon juice, lemon peel, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter, then simmer for 2–3 minutes until the meat is warm.

  3. For added richness, stir in cream or beaten egg yolks before serving.

Broil and serve

  1. Score the legs and rump, season with pepper and salt, and broil until nicely browned.

  2. Serve the broiled legs and rump on or around the pulled chicken.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Broth
Provides the liquid that moistens the meat and forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce with butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and helps thicken it with flour.
Cream or egg yolks
Adds richness and body to the sauce when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and butter. Cooking flour and butter together into a roux before adding liquid prevents lumps and gives a smooth, evenly thickened sauce. Simmering only until the meat is warm keeps the flour from losing its thickening power.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, shallot, lemon, flour, butter, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, shallot, lemon, flour, 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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