Skip to main content
Main

Dressing for Chicken or Turkey

A savory dressing made with crumbed stale bread, beef suet, herbs, and egg, used to coat chicken or turkey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Dressing for Chicken or Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the finely crumbed stale bread and chopped beef suet.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, thyme, marjoram, lemon peel, and nutmeg.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the beaten egg and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Use this dressing for one chicken; double the quantity for a turkey.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Provides the bulk of the dressing and absorbs moisture and fat so it holds together.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the dressing moist and rich as it cooks.
Beaten egg
Binds the crumbs together so the dressing holds its shape.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, beef, parsley, thyme, marjoram, lemon, egg):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, parsley, thyme, marjoram, lemon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes