Brain Farts: Who Invented Stove Top Stuffing? Who Cares?

Thanks, Ruth. Happy Thanksgiving.

Purdue University is eager to promote its alumni, apparently. I say this because I randomly received a press release from the university proclaiming that a Purdue graduate invented Stove Top stuffing.

I get the timing, because I guess a lot of Stove Top stuffing gets served every year at Thanksgiving. But it just seemed a tad … random to send this press release to a free-lance writer in Louisville. I truly never stopped to wonder who invented Stove Top Stuffing and likely never would have for the rest of my life. But, I figured, what the hell? So, here’s the story of how Stove Top Stuffing was invented.

The late Ruth Siems, who graduated from Purdue in 1953 as a home economics major (ah, the 1950s), is credited with inventing Stove Top. My first question was, “Why would stuffing need to be invented again?” It’s just bread and spices, right? My mom used to make that stuff homemade, and it was delicious.

Here, apparently, is what sets Stove Top stuffing apart from traditional: “The secret behind the dish is the dimensions of the bread crumbs, which General Foods patented in 1975.” So, size even matters for stuffing. Who knew?

The product first hit shelves in either 1971 or 1972, depending on whether you believe Purdue or Wikipedia, and when it was later patented, Siems’ name was listed first, along with fellow inventors Anthony Capossela Jr., John Halligan and C. Robert Wyss. Siems’ invention, the news release said, came at a time when there was a high demand in the U.S. for convenience foods. She worked on developing Stove Top stuffing while employed at General Foods, and the invention soon became a Thanksgiving staple.

According to Wikipedia — yes, Stove Top has a Wikipedia page, and I don’t — here’s how Stove Top stuffing was created in the first place: The invention, as noted above, was based on a specific size of bread that makes the addition of water turn the crunchy, dry product on the shelf into something close to traditional stuffing. Essentially, it’s a box of stale bread that you buy for $2 and serve to your family.

But in an interview with The Evansville Courier in 1991, Siems said the idea for the instant stuffing initially came from the marketing department, but it was up to the research and development to actually create it. Originally, the marketing department’s idea was for stuffing-flavored rice (???), but all the R&D employees were given a shot to create their own version. Siems developed her bread crumb-based dish, the bigwigs liked it, and that’s the genesis of what we now know as Stove Top stuffing.

Siems grew up in Evansville, Ind., and died in 2005 in Newburgh, Ind., according to her obituary in The New York Times, having worked at General Foods for nearly 35 years. Kraft foods, which now owns the rights to Stove Top stuffing, sells about 60 million boxes of the product a year, in a variety of flavors including traditional sage, turkey, chicken, cornbread, tomato and onion, long grain/wild rice and roasted garlic, cranberry and liverwurst.

Just kidding about that last one.

Anyway, if you actually took the time to read all that, you now likely feel you know way more about Stove Top stuffing than you ever needed to. Like, EVER. I feel the same way, if I’m honest. Just consider this my way of saying “Happy Thanksgiving.”