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Stuffing for Turkey or Fowl

A savory oyster and beef suet stuffing for turkey or fowl, flavored with herbs, spices, and a sauce of oyster liquor, stock, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stuffing for Turkey or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters in their liquor and strain.

Make the stuffing

  1. Chop 12 oysters small and mix with grated bread and minced beef suet.

  2. Add hard-boiled egg yolks, anchovy, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon peel, and parsley.

  3. Bind the mixture with beaten egg yolks.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil oyster liquor with white stock, white wine, anchovy, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Strain the sauce.

  3. Add butter rolled in flour, heating it with the remaining oysters.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main savory flavour and a tender, briny filling texture.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the stuffing body and structure.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and help it set when cooked.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness with flour as a thickener.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when rolled with butter and heated.

The step that matters

Bind the mixture with beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks must be evenly mixed through the crumbs so the stuffing holds together and sets as it heats rather than staying loose or clumpy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, lemon, bread, beef, egg, 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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