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Stuffing (Cups fine cracker crumbs)
2 cups fine cracker crumbs 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon thyme or summer savory 1/2 teaspoon white pepper 1/2 teaspoon onion juice 1 egg 2 tablespoons butter melted in 1 cup hot water
A terse ingredient list in the older style: the method is assumed. Combine the dry crumbs and seasonings, beat in the egg, then stir in the butter-and-hot-water mixture a little at a time until the stuffing just holds together.
- The hinge: add the liquid graduallyA full cup of hot water into two cups of cracker crumbs will give paste if dumped in at once. Add it in stages until the mixture is moist and clumps when squeezed, and stop there; crackers keep absorbing as they sit.
- What kind of crackerMost likely plain soda or common crackers, unsalted or lightly salted, though the recipe says only 'fine cracker crumbs'. If you use modern saltines, cut the added teaspoon of salt roughly in half and taste before adding more.
- That tablespoon of thymeA tablespoon of dried thyme or summer savory is aggressive by current taste. Start with a teaspoon and work up, or use a tablespoon if the herb is fresh and chopped.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion on a fine grater and press the pulp in a sieve, or squeeze a spoonful of grated onion in your hand. Half a teaspoon is a background note, not an onion presence.
- YieldAbout two and a half cups of packed stuffing, enough for a 4-5 lb chicken or a pair of small birds. Doubling covers a modest turkey.
- Cooking safelyIf it goes inside a bird, pack it loosely and take the stuffing itself to 165F, not just the meat. Baked separately in a buttered dish, 350F for 30-40 minutes gives a browned top; add a little more of the buttered water if it looks dry going in.
- White pepperProbably chosen so the stuffing stays pale and unspeckled. Black pepper can be substituted if flecks do not bother you, though the flavour is not identical.
Cracker-crumb stuffing is the thrifty New England cousin of bread stuffing: split or broken crackers were a pantry staple in the era of the cracker barrel, and crumbing them was a standard way to use up the dust and the stale ones. Summer savory, offered here as an equal alternative to thyme, was widely used with poultry in nineteenth-century American and Canadian cooking, and it survives in Maritime dressing recipes to this day. Onion juice rather than chopped onion suits the genteel turn-of-the-century table, where visible onion in a delicate stuffing was thought coarse. The Gold Medal books were published by the Washburn-Crosby milling company of Minneapolis as promotional cookery, which may account for the compressed, ingredient-list-only format.