The Old-School Thanksgiving Staple You'll Rarely Find On Tables Today

The Thanksgiving table is pretty thoroughly standardized by now; There's going to be a turkey, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and cranberry sauce. Maybe there are a few changes from table to table — perhaps someone makes a ham instead of a turkey, or maybe they serve roasted potatoes instead of mashed — but when you close your eyes and think of Thanksgiving, these are the dishes that come to mind. But there are some dishes that were once common, at least for a short period of time, that you just don't see as often these days. Consider, for instance, bread stuffing balls, which were quite popular in the 1940s.

What are bread stuffing balls? Well, they're pretty much exactly what they sound like: a bread-based stuffing or dressing (depending on what you call it), shaped into balls and baked in an oven. They feature celery and onion, as stuffing often does, but notably absent is the sausage you'll find in most contemporary recipes. It might sound strange to us in the modern day, but stuffing balls do make a certain kind of sense. After all, despite being called "stuffing," you're not actually supposed to stuff the mixture inside the turkey — it's unsanitary, and dries out the turkey, to boot — so why not form it into little balls?

There's a reason why these stuffing balls got popular in the 1940s, and it's the same reason why they don't traditionally include sausage or any other kind of meat. The '40s — or the first half of the decade, anyway — was a time of war, and those on the American homefront had to carefully ration ingredients and make do with what they had. While vegetables weren't rationed — and people were growing their own food in "victory gardens", which were revived during the pandemic — meat was quite restricted, so they made use of whatever stale bread they had, softened it up with milk or broth, and stretched the ingredients as far as they could go. Of course, by the time the war ended, Americans made up for lost time and went right back to buying meat, and these stuffing balls practically vanished from Thanksgiving tables.

You can, of course, make stuffing balls today, but thankfully you don't have rationing to worry about. (Then again, items are getting so expensive at the grocery store that it feels like rationing, anyway.) You're free to use whatever sort of meat you'd like when making stuffing balls, including sausage, turkey, or pork, to add a satisfying, new favorite dish to your holiday table.