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Potato Stuffing

A mixture of mashed potatoes, breadcrumbs, sage, onion, fowl fat, egg, and salt used to stuff a fowl before roasting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Clean and stuff the fowl.

  2. Place it in a roasting pan in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  3. Bake until tender, and a knife inserted at the joint shows it can be easily separated.

  4. For a tougher fowl, place it in a fireless cooker for four hours to overnight, then stuff and brown in the oven.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + sagetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Provides the main body and moisture of the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing structure and body.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when serving.
Fat from fowl
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the stuffing brown.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the stuffing.
Sage
Contributes its characteristic herbal aroma.

The step that matters

Bake until the fowl is tender. The knife test at the joint shows when the meat is done. Baking past that point dries out the fowl and the stuffing cooked inside it.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, bread, onion, egg):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, bread, onion, 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.

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