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Stuffing for a Turkey

A bread-based stuffing for turkey made with stale bread, butter, savory, salt, pepper, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and pepper work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 671 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stuffing for a Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Remove the crust from the bread.

  2. Soak the bread in enough hot water to thoroughly moisten it.

  3. Squeeze out all the excess water from the bread.

Mix and stuff

  1. Mix the soaked bread with salt, black pepper, egg yolks, and summer savory.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the turkey and sew it up carefully.

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. Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + summer savorytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the bulk of the stuffing and absorbs moisture to become tender.
Egg yolks
Bind the bread together and add richness to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and a softer, richer texture.

The step that matters

Squeeze out the excess water. Bread soaked in hot water holds far more liquid than it can bind. Leftover water makes the stuffing soggy and loose, so it should be squeezed well before mixing with the egg yolks.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, egg. 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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