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Oyster Stuffing (Cups stale bread crumbs cup)
3 cups stale bread crumbs 1/2 cup melted butter Salt and pepper Few drops onion juice 1 pint oysters Mix ingredients in the order given, add oysters, cleaned and drained from their liquor.
Turkey Stuffing (Swedish Style) 2 cups stale bread crumbs 2/3 cup melted butter 1/2 cup raisins, seeded and cut in pieces 1/2 cup English walnut meats, broken in pieces Salt and pepper
A plain bread stuffing lifted by a pint of oysters and a little onion juice, written in the shorthand of a period when every cook knew how a bird was filled and roasted.
- Onion juiceGrate a small onion on a fine rasp and press the pulp through a sieve, or crush it in a garlic press. A teaspoon is about right for three cups of crumbs; the original wants aroma, not texture.
- Stale bread crumbsDay-old white bread torn or grated coarse, not the fine dry crumb sold for coating. Three cups is roughly 5 oz. Fresh soft bread will collapse into paste once the oyster liquor and butter go in.
- Half a cup of butterFour ounces to three cups of crumbs is generous by modern habit and produces a rich, close stuffing. Two to three ounces gives a lighter result if that suits the bird better.
- The oystersA pint is somewhere between about 16 and 25 shucked oysters, depending on their size. Drain them well as directed; stuffing wet with liquor will not set. Large oysters are better halved so they distribute.
- Doneness is the hingeOysters and the poultry juices they sit in mean this stuffing must reach 165F at its centre, checked with a thermometer, not judged by the bird alone. Stuffing packed into a cavity lags well behind the breast meat.
- Baked separatelyBaked in a buttered dish at 350F, covered for 30 minutes and uncovered for 15 more, it cooks evenly and the oysters stay plump. Moisten with a few spoonfuls of stock if it looks dry going in.
- YieldAbout four to six servings; enough to fill a chicken or a small bird, or to part-fill a large turkey, which would want the quantity doubled or more.
Oyster stuffing belongs to a period when oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by the barrel; through the nineteenth century they turned up in soups, patties, pies and, above all, in the holiday bird. Oysters were commonly sold shucked by the pint, which is consistent with the measurement being given by volume rather than by count. The dish appears in a poultry chapter alongside a Swedish-style stuffing of raisins and walnuts, one of several fillings offered for the same roast.