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Pulled Turkey, or Chick

A pulled turkey dish simmered in a creamy lemon sauce and served with broiled legs and rump.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Pulled Turkey, or Chick

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Cut all the white meat off a cold turkey or fowl.

  2. Place the meat in a stewpan with cream, lemon peel, mace, cayenne pepper, salt, shallot, and lemon juice.

  3. Thicken with flour and water.

  4. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Score the legs and rump.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Broil until golden.

  4. Serve the broiled pieces over the turkey meat.

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. Lemon + shallottop 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. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey or fowl white meat
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the simmering liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances the flavour.
Shallot
Contributes a mild, savoury aroma to the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour and water. The flour must be fully blended and then simmered long enough for its starch to swell and thicken the sauce. Stirring well prevents lumps, and simmering removes the raw floury taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, cream, lemon, pepper, shallot, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, cream, lemon, pepper, shallot, flour. 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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