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BREAD STUFFING (No. 1)
1 1/2 cups bread-crums 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1/2 cup milk 1 tablespoon chopped onion 1 tablespoon butter Add the seasonings and butter to the crums and beat in the milk last.
A minimal, milk-moistened crumb stuffing of the sort meant to be multiplied up or down depending on the bird. The proportions are the whole recipe; everything else is judgement.
- "Crums"Most likely soft fresh breadcrumbs rather than the dry sandy crumbs sold in canisters, since dry crumbs would soak up the half cup of milk and stiffen into paste; if that is all you have, use rather less crumb.
- The onion is rawA tablespoon of raw chopped onion is meant to cook through inside the bird. If you are baking the stuffing separately, soften it in the butter first or it will stay sharp and crunchy.
- ButterSoften or melt it before working it into the crumbs. Cold butter cut into dry crumbs will stay in lumps that the milk cannot distribute.
- Add the milk lastThis is the hinge of the method. Season and butter the dry crumbs first so the salt and pepper spread evenly, then beat in the milk to bring it just together. A wetter mix packs dense and steams rather than staying light.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups loose, enough for a small bird or a fish; a large turkey would need several times the quantity.
- SaltA full teaspoon to 1 1/2 cups of crumbs is assertive. Scale back if the poultry has been brined.
- DonenessStuffing cooked inside a bird must reach 165F at the centre of the cavity, which usually means the bird itself runs past that point. Baking it in a separate dish, covered, at 350F for 25 to 30 minutes gives more reliable results.
Bread stuffing in this stripped-down form -- crumbs for body, fat for richness, liquid for cohesion, onion and pepper for interest -- underlies much of what later became American holiday dressing. The numbering as No. 1 points to the habit of giving a plain base recipe and then ringing changes on it, so a cook could learn one ratio and improvise from there. Milk as the moistening liquid, rather than stock or beaten egg, gives the mild, evenly seasoned result characteristic of early twentieth-century home-economics cookery with its precise cup measures. The spelling "crums" was an older variant that lingered in kitchen writing after it had left ordinary prose.