Skip to main content
Main

Fare or Stuffing

A savory stuffing made with spinach, chicken, brain, eggs, sweet oil, flour, and daube gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Spinach and mushroom work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 778 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fare or Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the spinach.

  2. Chop the spinach, chicken, and calf's brain finely.

  3. In a bowl, mix the chopped ingredients with the raw eggs, sweet oil, salt, and pepper.

Make the paste and squares

  1. In another bowl, combine the flour, 2 eggs, and enough water to make a stiff paste.

  2. Roll out the paste flat and thin.

  3. Place 4 layers of stuffing along the length of the paste. Fold the paste over.

  4. Cut the folded paste lengthwise into strips. Cut the strips crosswise into small squares.

  5. Boil the squares in a pot of boiling water for 30 minutes. Strain the squares.

Layer and serve

  1. Layer the squares in a deep dish with grated parmesan and daube gravy. Repeat layering until the dish is full.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Spinach + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together778 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Parmesan cheese + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  3. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Spinach + parmesan cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the chopped filling and help hold the stuffing together as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the stiff paste that wraps the filling and gives the squares structure.
Spinach
Adds bulk, moisture, and a green, earthy flavour to the filling.
Chicken
Supplies the main meat in the filling, adding savoury flavour and body.
Sweet oil
Adds fat to the filling, keeping it moist and tender.
Grated parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savoury flavour and browning when layered in the dish.

The step that matters

Make the stiff paste and roll it thin. A stiff dough with enough water but not too much holds its shape and wraps the filling without tearing. Rolling it thin keeps the squares tender rather than doughy after boiling.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, pepper, flour, parmesan cheese, mushroom):

  1. Spinachthe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, pepper, flour, parmesan cheese, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipes