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Stuffing for Boiled Turkey, Goose, or Duck

A savory stuffing made with beef suet, stale bread, herbs, onions, lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, oysters, anchovy or ham, butter, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffing for Boiled Turkey, Goose, or Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the beef suet and grate the stale bread.

Make the stuffing

  1. Add the soup herbs, chopped onions, lemon peel, nutmeg, white pepper, salt, oysters, and anchovy or minced ham/tongue.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, then add the mixture and warm it up.

  3. Moisten the stuffing with stock and stuff the bird.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Stale bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the stuffing body and structure.
Oysters
Contribute savoury, briny flavour and a soft, tender texture when warmed.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps carry flavour through the mixture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, onion, lemon, nutmeg, oyster, anchovy):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, onion, lemon, nutmeg, oyster, anchovy. 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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