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Stuffed Chicken or Turkey Legs

Stuffed chicken or turkey legs filled with chopped meat, liver, pork larding, parsley, and eggs, then baked, cooled, coated, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 the legs

  1. Remove the tendons and bone from the drumsticks, leaving about 1.5 inches at the small end.

  2. Stuff the leg with the finely chopped chicken or veal, liver, larding pork, parsley, salt, pepper, and moisten with one egg.

  3. Draw the skin over the end. Sew it closed, keeping the shape natural.

Simmer and shape

  1. Place the stuffed legs in a baking pan. Cover with boiling water.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour or until tender.

  3. Remove from water. Press into shape. Let cool.

  4. Take out the stitches.

Coat and cook

  1. Dredge with salt and pepper. Roll in beaten egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot oil or butter until browned, or broil for 4 minutes for chicken legs or 6 minutes for turkey legs.

  3. Optionally, rub with mustard and red pepper before coating.

Serve

  1. Serve arranged like chops, masking the bones with paper frills.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or turkey legs
Provide the meat that is stuffed, shaped, and cooked as the main dish.
Chicken or veal
Forms the savory, moist filling that fills the leg.
Chicken liver
Adds rich, savory depth and a soft texture to the stuffing.
Egg
Moistens the filling and binds it together during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried or broiled.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender before coating. The legs must be fully cooked in the simmering water before coating, since frying or broiling mainly browns the outside. Simmering that is too short leaves the stuffing and meat undercooked, while the coating is meant to set and brown, not cook the interior.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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