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Plain Stuffing for Turkey

A simple bread-based stuffing for turkey, flavored with butter, salt, pepper, thyme, and optional sweet potato.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain Stuffing for Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Lay a piece of cheesecloth over a colander.

  2. Dip pieces of stale bread in warm water and lay them into the cloth.

  3. Once you have enough for a quart, gather the cloth and squeeze out all the water.

  4. Empty the cloth into a dry pan.

Season and mix

  1. Add melted butter, salt, pepper, and thyme to the bread. Mix thoroughly and it's ready for the turkey.

  2. For a richer stuffing, add mashed sweet potato.

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 + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + sweet potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Pepper + sweet potatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  5. Bread + sweet potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 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
Provides the body of the stuffing, soaked and squeezed so it absorbs the butter evenly.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the bread for a softer, more tender texture.
Sweet potato
Adds moisture, body and natural sweetness to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Squeeze out all the water from the bread. Bread soaked in water holds moisture that can make the stuffing soggy and dilute the butter's coating. Removing the excess water lets the bread absorb the butter and seasoning evenly.

Swap the sweet potato

The recipe marks sweet potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, thyme):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

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