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Good Stuffing for Turkey or Chicken

A savory bread-based stuffing for turkey or chicken made with butter, herbs, onion, celery, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Good Stuffing for Turkey or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Moisten the bread crumbs with melted butter and season with salt, pepper, thyme, parsley, and onion juice.

  2. In a saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and fry the chopped onion until soft.

Make the stuffing

  1. Add the soaked bread, pressing out all the water, along with the stock, salt, pepper, thyme, and celery, then stir until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan.

  2. Stuff the mixture into a turkey or chicken.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the melted butter and seasonings, forming the base body of the stuffing.
Soaked bread
Adds moisture and a soft, tender texture once its water is pressed out.
Onion
Softened in butter, it adds sweetness and savory depth to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the crumbs and carrying flavor.
Stock
Adds moisture and savory flavor to bind the stuffing.

The step that matters

Pressing out the bread's water. Soaked bread holds a lot of water. If it is not pressed dry, the stuffing stays soggy and loose, and it will not hold together or firm up as it cooks.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, thyme, parsley, celery):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, thyme, parsley, celery. 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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