Name: Dressing or Stuffing for Fowls
Ingredients: stale bread crusts (from a 1-pound loaf); ½ cup tepid water; 1 teaspoon black pepper; 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon powdered summer savory; 1 teaspoon sage or minced green herb; ½ cup melted butter; 1 beaten egg (optional); chopped sausage (optional, for turkey)

Why it works: Summer savory and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Dressing or Stuffing for Fowls

Ingredients

stale bread crusts (from a 1-pound loaf)
½ cup tepid water
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 teaspoon powdered summer savory
1 teaspoon sage or minced green herb
½ cup melted butter
1 beaten egg (optional)
chopped sausage (optional, for turkey)

Directions

Remove the brown crust from stale bread until you have enough to fill the inside of a 1-pound loaf.
Place the crusts in a dish and pour tepid water over them; let them soak for 1 minute.
Squeeze the soaked bread hard to remove excess water and place it in another dish.
Lightly toss the squeezed bread with your fingers.
Add pepper, salt, summer savory, sage, melted butter, and the beaten egg (if using).
Mix all ingredients thoroughly until well combined.
Use the stuffing to dress fowls, fish, or meats.

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.

Summer savory + sagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together237 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together671 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sage + turkeytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together154 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, summer savory, butter, egg, turkey):

Sagethe original
Thymefits about as well
Parsleyfits about as well
Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, summer savory, butter, egg, turkey. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.