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Giblet Stuffing for Turkeys

A stuffing made from boiled turkey giblets, butter, breadcrumbs, and sherry or Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and sherry work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43 recipes. Both carry hexyl acetate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Giblet Stuffing for Turkeys

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the giblets

  1. Put the giblets in a saucepan and cover with boiling water.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then boil gently until tender.

  3. Save the cooking water for gravy.

  4. Chop the giblets finely.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and add the chopped giblets, breadcrumbs, and seasoning.

  2. Stir until light brown, then add the sherry or Madeira wine.

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. Turkey + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  2. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Giblets
Provide the main savoury meat flavour and body of the stuffing.
Stale breadcrumbs
Absorb the butter and liquids to give the stuffing its bulk and soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the breadcrumbs and giblets brown in the pan.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the rich giblets and butter.

The step that matters

Stir until light brown before adding the wine. Browning the breadcrumbs and giblets in butter builds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Adding the wine too early stops the browning and leaves the stuffing pale and flat-tasting.

“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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