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Stuffing for Turkey or Fowl

A savory stuffing made with oysters, bread, beef suet, eggs, anchovy, herbs, and a sauce of oyster liquor, stock, wine, and butter.

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 own liquor and strain it.

  2. Add the oysters, mace, whole pepper, and lemon peel to the strained liquor.

  3. Parboil the mixture, then chop 1 1/2 dozen oysters small.

Make the stuffing

  1. Combine the chopped oysters with grated bread, minced beef suet, hard-boiled egg yolks, anchovy, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon peel, and parsley.

  2. Bind the mixture with the beaten egg yolks.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Strain the sauce and add butter rolled in flour.

  3. Heat the sauce 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 flavour of the stuffing and the sauce.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the stuffing body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing together and set it when cooked.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, thickens it.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the butter rolled in flour to the strained sauce. Flour thickens the sauce only when it is cooked and whisked into hot liquid; added to a cold or unstrained sauce, it can clump and leave the sauce lumpy or thin.

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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