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Sage and Onion Stuffing

A savory stuffing made with onions, sage, bread crumbs, butter, egg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sage and Onion Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions and sage

  1. Peel the onions and place them in boiling water for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the sage leaves to the boiling water for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Chop the onions and sage very finely.

Combine and bind

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped onions, sage, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Work the mixture together with the yolk of the egg until well combined.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softened by blanching, they add sweetness and moisture to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and onion moisture, giving the stuffing body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the crumbs.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it holds together when shaped.
Sage
Provides the herbal aroma that defines the stuffing.

The step that matters

Working in the egg yolk. The yolk is the binder, so it must be worked through the whole mixture evenly. Unevenly mixed egg leaves dry crumbs in some spots and wet clumps in others, so the stuffing will not hold together consistently.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, bread, butter, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, bread, butter, pepper, 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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