Skip to main content
Main

Fillets of Turkey with Forcemeat, Breaded

Breaded fillets of turkey coated with a forcemeat mixture and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fillets of Turkey with Forcemeat, Breaded

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the turkey breast into slices ⅜ inch thick and trim into uniform pieces.

  2. Cook the bread crumbs in milk over low heat until a paste forms, stirring frequently.

  3. Add butter, pounded chicken or veal, egg white, cayenne, and salt to the paste; mix well.

  4. Press the mixture through a sieve to create a smooth filling.

Bread and fry

  1. Spread the filling on one side of each turkey fillet, then dip in egg and coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the breaded fillets in deep fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the fillets overlapping in a crown shape around parsley or celery tips.

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Turkey + chickentop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Soft bread crumbs
Cooked in milk to form a paste that binds the filling.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs into a paste that gives the filling body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the filling.
Raw chicken or veal
Pounded smooth to give the filling a fine, cohesive texture that holds together.
Egg white
Binds the filling and helps the coating adhere to the fillets.

The step that matters

Press the filling through a sieve. Pressing the mixture smooths out lumps in the pounded meat and paste, giving an even, fine-textured filling that spreads evenly and holds together when fried.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, bread, milk, butter, chicken, egg, 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.

You might also like

Turkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing6 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes