Roast turkey breast with herb stuffing

Name: Roast turkey breast with herb stuffing
Yield: Serves 6
Ingredients: 1 boneless skin-on turkey breast, about 1.2 kg / 2½ lb; 50 g butter, softened; 1 tsp dried sage; 1 tsp dried thyme; 1 tsp salt; ½ tsp pepper; 600 g potatoes, chunked; 1 tbsp oil; 200 g stale bread, cubed; 1 onion, diced; 2 celery sticks, diced; 250 ml chicken stock (1 cup)

Bake the stuffing separately: the breast cooks evenly and you get a crisp top.

Dinner1 hr 50 min + restingServes 6

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Roast turkey breast with herb stuffing — the black-and-white years — The black-and-white years · Serving illustration

THE STORY ON YOUR PLATE

A wartime Thanksgiving table

More about Woodrow Wilson →

The twenty-eighth president served during World War I.

Documented meal / preference

Turkey appears on Wilson’s 1917 Thanksgiving menu. A smaller breast with separate stuffing adapts that recorded holiday centrepiece for a household oven.

The president & the table

Wilson’s 1917 Thanksgiving menu included oyster soup, turkey with vegetables, and pumpkin pie. The meal also belonged to a period when food conservation had become a public responsibility. A presidential holiday table could celebrate tradition while responding to the pressures of war.

Behind this story

Wilson White House Thanksgiving menu, 1917; regional culinary reconstruction for the cobbler.

APRON ON. HISTORY CAN WAIT.

Make it at home.

Serves 6

Roast turkey breast with herb stuffing

A wartime Thanksgiving table

Make it at home.

What you’ll need

Let’s make it

More from this table.

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