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Sage and Onion Stuffing, for Geese, Ducks or Pork

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

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, for Geese, Ducks or Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, peel, and boil the onions in two waters to remove the strong flavor.

  2. Scald the sage leaves in hot water for a few minutes.

  3. Chop the onions and sage leaves finely.

Make the stuffing

  1. Mix the chopped onions and sage with bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and pieces of butter.

  2. Add the yolk of one egg and mix 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. 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
Boiling in two waters mellows their strong flavor, leaving a sweeter, gentler base for the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body of the stuffing, absorbing moisture and butter to hold the mixture together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and keeping the stuffing moist.
Egg yolk
Binds the crumbs and chopped vegetables together so the stuffing holds its shape.

The step that matters

Boiling the onions in two waters. Boiling in fresh water twice draws out the sharp sulfur compounds that make raw onion harsh. Skipping or shortening this leaves the stuffing tasting bitter and pungent.

Swap the onion

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

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

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