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Stupfed Chicken or Turkey Legs

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Stupfed Chicken or Turkey Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the legs

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

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

  3. Moisten the mixture with the egg.

  4. Sew the skin over the end to keep the shape natural.

Simmer and shape

  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 cook

  1. Dredge the legs with salt and pepper.

  2. Roll the legs in beaten egg.

  3. Roll the legs in bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the legs in hot fat until browned.

  5. Broil the legs for 4 minutes for chicken legs or 6 minutes for turkey legs.

Serve

  1. Optionally, rub the legs with mustard and red pepper before coating with egg and crumbs.

  2. Serve the legs arranged like chops.

  3. Mask the bones with paper frills.

  4. Flatten the leg to look like a cutlet.

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. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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 main stuffing, giving the legs their body and bulk when cooked.
Liver
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing, giving it a deeper flavour.
Egg
Binds the stuffing mixture and forms a coating that helps crumbs adhere and brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried and broiled.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender before coating. Simmering cooks the stuffed meat through while keeping it moist. Frying is for browning the outside, so the interior must already be cooked to avoid dry or undercooked results.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, pork, pepper, parsley, egg, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, pork, pepper, parsley, 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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