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Bread Dressing for Goose or Duck

A savory bread dressing made with stale bread, fat, liver, gizzard, heart, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bread Dressing for Goose or Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the stale bread in water and then squeeze it dry.

Cook and combine

  1. Heat the fat in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the bread crumbs to the skillet and fry them lightly.

  3. Mix in the chopped liver, gizzard, heart, salt, pepper, onion, ginger, celery root, nutmeg, strained tomatoes, and egg, then combine all ingredients well.

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. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the bulk of the dressing and absorbs moisture and flavor.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it holds together when cooked.
Fat
Carries flavor and helps lightly brown the bread crumbs in the skillet.
Strained tomatoes
Adds moisture and mild acidity to the mixture.

The step that matters

Squeezing the bread dry. If the bread stays too wet, it cannot fry lightly in the fat and the dressing turns soggy and dense instead of holding its texture.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, liver, pepper, onion, ginger, celery, tomato):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, liver, pepper, onion, ginger, celery, tomato. 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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