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Grandma's Bread Stuffing
Remove the crust from two small baker's loaves; slice and pick in small bits; season with one-half teaspoon pepper, two and onehalf teaspoons salt, one-half teaspoon powdered sage, and one medium-sized onion finely chopped; mix well, using two forks; melt two-thirds cup of butter in three-fourths cup boiling water; add to first mixture; toss lightly with forks; add two eggs slightly beaten, mix well, and fill well the body and breast of turkey. If bread is very stale, more moisture may be added. If a crumbly stuffing is desired, omit eggs.
A plain, honest bread stuffing of the period, built on butter and hot water rather than stock. A few of its measures need translating before you scale it to a modern bird.
- "Two small baker's loaves"A small commercial loaf of the period was probably in the neighbourhood of a pound. Two of them, crusts off and torn up, should give something like 10 to 14 cups of loose bread — enough for a large bird of roughly 14 to 18 lb. For a smaller bird, halve everything.
- Salt reads high, and isn'tTwo and a half teaspoons across a dozen-plus cups of bread is about right, though it may assume unsalted or lightly salted butter. With modern salted butter, start at 1 1/2 teaspoons and taste a spoonful of the moistened mix before the eggs go in.
- Powdered sage is stronger than rubbedHalf a teaspoon of powdered sage is a firm hand. If your jar says "rubbed sage," which is fluffier and milder, use a full teaspoon to land in the same place.
- The raw onionThe onion goes in uncooked and softens only in the bird's heat. Sweating it in a little of the butter first gives a rounder flavour and removes the risk of crunchy, sharp bits in stuffing that hasn't cooked long.
- Butter and boiling waterTwo-thirds cup butter melted into three-quarters cup boiling water is essentially a hot emulsion poured over the bread. Add it in two or three goes, tossing between, or the bottom of the bowl turns to paste while the top stays dry.
- Don't "fill well"The single instruction to ignore. Pack stuffing loosely — about three-quarters full — so heat can penetrate. A tightly packed cavity is the usual reason a stuffing sits below temperature while the breast overcooks.
- Temperature, not timeStuffing cooked inside a bird must reach 165F at the centre of the mass, measured with a thermometer, not by the bird's own doneness. If the turkey is ready and the stuffing is not, spoon it into a buttered dish and finish it in a 350F oven.
- Baked separatelyAny of this mixture can go into a buttered dish and bake at 350F for 35-45 minutes, covered for the first half. Moisten with turkey stock rather than plain water for more flavour.
- The eggsThey bind the stuffing into something sliceable. Left out, as the recipe allows, you get the loose, crumbly kind — in which case add a splash more liquid, since the eggs were carrying moisture too.
Bread stuffing of this kind — stale loaf, onion, sage, butter, sometimes egg — is the plainest branch of a very old family; forcemeats bound with bread go back to medieval European cookery, and sage had attached itself firmly to poultry and pork in English kitchens long before it crossed the Atlantic. What marks this version as American and turn-of-the-century is the assumption that the cook buys bread from a baker rather than baking it, and the naming of it as "Grandma's," which lends an ordinary formula the authority of family practice. 52 Sunday Dinners is arranged as menus following the calendar year, so a turkey stuffing sits among the cooler-weather dinners. The note that eggs may be omitted for a crumbly stuffing records a real preference either way — bound versus loose stuffing is still the sort of thing households disagree about.