The Once-Popular Stuffing Balls That Graced Thanksgiving Tables In The 1950s

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A Thanksgiving dinner packs in many delights: a juicy roasted turkey, mouth-watering veggie sides (we're partial to green beans with mushrooms and tahini), all finished with a slice of maple pumpkin pie. Yet for many, the comforting appeal of stuffing shines as a seasonal highlight. This bread-based dish mixes up herbs, seasonings, and just about anything from the pantry, then slow-cooks to condense holiday flavor into one bite. Today served by the heaping spoonful, the food once appeared in ball form, too.

Popular in the 1950s, the concept originally served as an add-on for stuffing cooked inside the turkey. Cooks crafted these flavorful bread balls to create more stuffing to go around, all while lending a textural spin on the classic. Formed into a size ranging from a meatball to a hamburger patty and then baked, the stuffing receives an exterior crunch while the interior is moist. Packed with ingredients like celery, onions, and sage, it's a dish that simply reimagines familiar stuffing flavors.

It's hard to say precisely when these ball-shaped creations started to disappear from the Thanksgiving table. Recipes circulated circa the mid-20th century in places like "Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book," and others enjoyed the dish as a traditional rendition passed down generations. Since the balls started as stuffing that wouldn't fit inside the turkey, perhaps the increasing trend of preparing dressing rather than stuffing — meaning cooking the bread separately in a standalone casserole pan — caused the dish to lose relevance.

Although now on the obscure side, there's still merit to forming up these scrumptious stuffing spheres. They're easy to batch ahead of time, present as already doled-out portion sizes (perfect for a potluck!), and simply catch the eye with their fun appearance. Their core components are interchangeable with your classic stuffing; use go-to seasonings as well as white or wheat bread — as long as it's stale. Just take note that stuffing balls require eggs to hold their form, and you could even incorporate sausage and mushrooms, taking the dish further into meatball territory.

With the stuffing ingredients prepped, the balls require some technique to form. If the composition's too dry, the brittle balls fall apart; too moist, and they won't hold. Old-school recipes rely on intuitive mixing — cooks pour in chicken broth until the consistency's perfect. Then, the stuffing gets shaped into a ball by hand, often around two inches in diameter. The forming technique is similar to a meatball recipe.

Roasted until the exterior's crispy, this rendition of stuffing adds a fun twist to Thanksgiving dining. A nostalgic amuse-bouche, it's a showcase that delectable concepts get buried in time, so shape up a pan (or more!) of these stuffing balls come next holiday season.