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Mexican Stuffing for Turkey

A Mexican-style stuffing made with bread, milk, eggs, butter, salt, nutmeg, and almonds, baked and used to fill turkey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mexican Stuffing for Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the stuffing

  1. Soak the crumbled bread in the milk until sufficiently soaked.

  2. Add the eggs, butter, salt, and nutmeg to the soaked bread.

  3. Mix in the almonds and beat the mixture well.

Bake and stuff

  1. Bake the mixture in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked, testing with a straw like a cake.

  2. Stuff the turkey with the cooked mixture.

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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the bread and milk together and set into a firm, sliceable mixture when baked.
Bread
Provides the bulk and soaks up the milk to form the body of the stuffing.
Milk
Soaks the bread and moistens the mixture so it stays tender as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing moisture and flavour to the stuffing.
Almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft bread and custard.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked, testing with a straw. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the mixture loose and wet, while overbaking makes it dry and rubbery. A straw inserted into the centre and coming out clean shows it is set.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

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