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Stuffing for Fowl

A bread-based stuffing with herbs, onions, celery, and optional chestnuts, oysters, olives, mushrooms, giblets, or sausage, used to fill fowl before roasting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffing for Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cubed bread, parsley, onion, celery, salt, and pepper.

  2. If using, add chestnuts, oysters, olives, mushrooms, or giblets to the mixture.

  3. For a richer dressing, mix in cooked sausage or fat salt pork.

Stuff the fowl

  1. Stuff the mixture into the fowl before roasting.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Parsley + chestnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Cubes form the bulk and absorb moisture, giving the stuffing its body.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens and mellows.
Celery
Contributes a crisp, fresh aroma and some texture to the stuffing.
Sausage or fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor, enriching the dressing and keeping it moist.

Swap the chestnut

The recipe marks chestnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, onion, celery, pepper, oyster, olive):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, onion, celery, pepper, oyster, olive. 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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