Quick answer: Plan 3/4 cup of cooked stuffing per person — about 5 oz (145 g). That is roughly 1½ oz (43 g) of dry stuffing mix each, so a 6 oz box feeds four and a 12 oz bag feeds eight. Ten guests need 7½ cups.
Three-quarters of a cup of cooked stuffing per person. That is the American consensus figure, and four independent page-one sources give exactly it.
The problem is that only one of them says what the cup contains.
The hidden variable: 3/4 cup of what?
A cup of dry seasoned bread cubes weighs roughly 1.6 oz (45 g). A cup of finished, moistened, baked stuffing weighs roughly 6.8 oz (190 g). Same measuring cup, four times the food.
So when Parade and the Old Farmer's Almanac both print "3/4 cup of stuffing per person" and neither says whether that is what you buy or what you serve, they have published a number that could mean 1.2 oz of dry mix or 5 oz of dinner. That is the whole confusion, and it is why hosts either end up with a sad half-pan or three pounds of leftovers.
Food Network's portion planner is the only source we found that resolves it. Its wording is "each guest will eat about 3/4 cup (cooked)." That parenthesis settles the question: 3/4 cup means finished stuffing on the plate. Every other US source in this cluster is quoting the same figure without the parenthesis.
Once you know that, the conversion follows. Dry mix roughly triples in weight when you add stock and butter, so 3/4 cup of cooked stuffing needs about 1½ oz (43 g) of dry mix — and dry mix is what the supermarket sells you.
What the sources actually say
| Source | Per person | Unit stated? |
|---|---|---|
| Food Network | 3/4 cup | Yes — "(cooked)" |
| Parade | 3/4 cup | No |
| Almanac | 3/4 cup | No |
| Cook for Folks | 1/2 cup | No |
| Safefood (Ireland) | 100 g | No |
That is a genuine two-fold spread, from 1/2 cup to 1 cup, and we are not going to average it away. Culinary Hill sits at the top end — a 1 lb loaf makes about 10 cups of cubes and "10 to 12 servings (assume 1 cup of stuffing per person)". Cook for Folks sits at the bottom with 1/2 cup, and it is transparent about why: its chart is built on boxed Stove Top, where the manufacturer's own serving is half a cup.
Naming the bias, because it explains the gap
The low figures and the high figures come from people with opposite incentives, and neither side says so.
Safefood is an Irish state food-safety body whose Christmas planner exists to cut food waste. Its 100 g per person is a deliberately unglamorous number — and it is stated as a shopping weight without saying dry or cooked, which is the same omission in metric. Read as cooked, 100 g is a little over half a cup, so Safefood lands at the bottom of the American range rather than outside it. Read as dry mix, 100 g would be well over two cups of finished stuffing — a four-fold error hiding in one official line.
The British Dietetic Association's Christmas dinner recipe is lower still: 200 g of bread plus fruit, egg and spread, serving six to eight, which is roughly 60–80 g of stuffing a head. That is a dietitian's portion, published alongside 150 g of turkey per person, and it is not trying to be a feast.
US holiday food media has no such brake. Nobody has ever been criticised for making too much stuffing.
The other 3/4 cup — and this one is per pound
Here is the trap almost nobody flags. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service also publishes a 3/4 cup figure — but it is 3/4 cup of prepared stuffing per pound of bird, not per person, and it is a packing limit rather than a serving suggestion. "Spoon the stuffing in loosely," FSIS says, so heat can reach the middle.
Those two identical-looking numbers pull in different directions. A 14 lb turkey takes up to about 10½ cups by the per-pound rule, but a 14 lb turkey feeds roughly 10 to 11 people, who only need 8 cups between them. Fill the cavity to the USDA maximum and bake a pan on the side and you have made half again as much as anyone will eat. Sizing the bird itself is a separate calculation — see how much turkey per person.
The safety point the food blogs skip
If you stuff the bird, the stuffing must reach 165 °F (74 °C) at its centre, checked with a thermometer — not the breast, the stuffing. FSIS is explicit that the turkey can hit temperature while the stuffing has not.
- Never stuff ahead. Wet and dry ingredients go together immediately before the bird goes in the oven.
- Rest 20 minutes after roasting, then take the stuffing out before carving.
- Never refrigerate a cooked turkey with the stuffing still inside — it cools far too slowly. Leftovers keep 3–4 days.
- FSIS's own recommendation, for what it is worth: "for optimal safety and uniform doneness, cook stuffing separately."
How much to make, by guest count
At 3/4 cup of cooked stuffing per person, in units you can actually buy:
| Guests | Cooked stuffing | What to buy |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 3 cups (580 g) | One 6 oz box |
| 6 | 4½ cups (870 g) | One 12 oz bag |
| 10 | 7½ cups (1.4 kg) | One 12 oz bag + one box |
| 12 | 9 cups (1.7 kg) | Three 6 oz boxes |
| 20 | 15 cups (2.9 kg) | Five 6 oz boxes |
A 6 oz box of Stove Top makes six ½-cup servings — three cups — so it covers four people at the 3/4-cup rate, not six. That single line is where most under-catering starts.
Making it from scratch instead? A 1 lb loaf yields about 10 cups of cubes and about 10 cups of finished stuffing, so one loaf per 13 guests.
| Guests | Cooked stuffing | Dry mix | Loaves |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 6 cups | 12 oz (340 g) | ¾ lb |
| 15 | 11¼ cups | 22 oz (625 g) | 1¼ lb |
| 25 | 19 cups | 37 oz (1.05 kg) | 2 lb |
| 40 | 30 cups | 60 oz (1.7 kg) | 3 lb |
| 50 | 37½ cups | 75 oz (2.1 kg) | 3¾ lb |
The Almanac's own chart gives 19 cups for 25 and 75 cups for 100, which matches this arithmetic exactly.
When to go up, and when to go down
Go to 1 cup a head if stuffing is the dish your family fights over, if you are serving only two or three sides, or if you want next-day leftovers. Parade suggests adding 1.5 extra cups for every 6 people specifically for leftovers, which is about a third more.
Stay at 1/2 cup if you are putting out five or more sides, if there is a mashed potato and a sweet potato casserole already competing for the same plate space, or if you are following Irish or UK portion guidance rather than American.
Two things that quietly change the answer: gravy, because stuffing that will be swimming in it goes further — see how much gravy per person — and the rest of the plate, which is why we size the whole table in Christmas dinner quantities per person and how much food for Friendsgiving.
Once the food is sized, the drinks are the other half of the day. Our Thanksgiving drink quantities guide handles wine, beer and non-alcoholic pours for the same guest count, and the party drink calculator will do the arithmetic for you.