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Brown Bread Stuffing

A savory stuffing made with grated brown bread, eggs, boiled tongue, spices, and tomato ketchup, cooked over hot water for turkey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Bread Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Grate the Boston brown bread into a mixing bowl.

  2. Gradually add the chopped hard cooked eggs and minced cold boiled tongue.

  3. Stir in the cayenne pepper, thyme, and Tabasco sauce.

  4. Add enough tomato ketchup to moisten the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook over hot water for a few moments.

  2. Fill the turkey with the stuffing before it cools completely.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Boston brown bread
Forms the bulk of the stuffing and soaks up moisture from the ketchup.
Hard cooked eggs
Add body and richness, binding the crumbs into a cohesive stuffing.
Cold boiled tongue
Contributes savory meaty flavour and a firmer texture.
Tomato ketchup
Moistens the mixture and adds sweetness and acidity.

The step that matters

Fill the turkey before the stuffing cools completely. Warm stuffing placed in the bird helps keep the interior mixture hot as the bird roasts, which supports food safety. Letting it cool fully before filling risks the stuffing staying in the lukewarm range too long during cooking.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, pepper, sauce, tomato, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, pepper, sauce, tomato, ketchup. 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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