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Stuffed Chicken or Turkey Legs

A dish of chicken or turkey legs stuffed with a mixture of chopped meat, liver, pork, herbs, and egg, then baked, cooled, breaded, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Chicken or Turkey Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stuff

  1. Remove the tendons and bone from the chicken or turkey legs, leaving about 1.5 inches at the small end.

  2. Stuff the leg with a mixture of finely chopped chicken or veal, liver, larding pork, salt, pepper, and parsley.

  3. Moisten the stuffed leg with 1 egg.

  4. Sew the skin over the end tightly to maintain the shape.

Simmer and cool

  1. Place the stuffed legs in a baking pan.

  2. Cover the pan with boiling water.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour or until tender.

  4. Remove the legs from the water.

  5. Press the legs into shape.

  6. Let the legs cool.

  7. Remove the stitches from the legs.

Coat and fry

  1. Season the legs with salt and pepper.

  2. Roll the legs in beaten egg and bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the legs in hot oil.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken or veal
Forms the meaty body of the stuffing, giving texture and savory flavor.
Liver
Adds richness and depth of flavor to the stuffing.
Larding pork
Adds fat that helps keep the stuffing moist during cooking.
Egg
Binds the coating so the crumbs stick and set during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns in hot oil.

The step that matters

Let the legs cool before removing the stitches. Freshly simmered legs are soft and the stuffing is still loose. Cooling lets the proteins set and the shape hold, so removing the stitches too early can make the legs split or lose their form.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, pork, pepper, egg, bread):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, pork, pepper, egg, bread. 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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