What spices go with turkey

The constraint with turkey is not which spice but where it goes. A rub on the outside of a whole bird seasons the skin and nothing beneath it, so pepper belongs in a butter worked under the skin, or in a brine, where it can reach the meat over hours.

How: Worked into a butter under the skin, or dissolved into a brine

Add alongside: Thyme, Bay leaf, Salt

Mole poblano over turkey is the dish pasilla exists for in most people's experience of it, and the pairing is a good demonstration of what the chilli does. Turkey is lean and mild and would be lost under a sweet or sharp sauce; pasilla supplies darkness and a cocoa depth that gives the sauce body without adding either sweetness or acidity.

How: Toasted and blended with ancho and guajillo into a mole for turkey; In an adobo for slow-roasted turkey leg

Add alongside: Ancho, Guajillo, Dark chocolate

• Toast it for seconds rather than minutes. Pasilla is thinner than ancho and its own bitterness hides a burnt batch until the sauce is finished.

Mole poblano over turkey is the dish this chilli exists for, and the pairing is structural rather than incidental: turkey is lean and mild, and a sauce built on thick-fleshed sweet chillies supplies the fat-carried richness and body the bird has none of. Mulato is the darkest of the three chillies in that sauce.

How: Mole poblano with ancho and pasilla; Toasted, soaked, blended and the purée fried

Add alongside: Ancho, Pasilla, Cinnamon (Ceylon)

• Frying the blended sauce before liquid goes in is the step that turns it from raw to round, and it is the one most often skipped.

Turkey is lean and mild and takes a warm spice without being overwhelmed, which is why allspice appears in so many stuffings and brines. It is also the bridge to the sweet accompaniments — cranberry, apple, chestnut — that would otherwise sit apart from the bird.

Add alongside: Cassia, Cloves, Thyme

The traditional British choice for poultry forcemeat and stuffing, and a better one than nutmeg here — mace is lighter and more peppery, and it does not darken a pale stuffing the way grated nutmeg does.

Add alongside: Black pepper, Thyme, Onion