Name: Sage Stuffing for Geese or Tame Ducks
Ingredients: 4 cups stale bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons melted butter; 2 teaspoons powdered sage; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 1 teaspoon powdered sweet marjoram

Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Sage Stuffing for Geese or Tame Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Combine the stale bread crumbs, melted butter, sage, parsley, salt, black pepper, and marjoram in a large bowl. Mix all ingredients together until well combined.
Moisten the mixture with the melted butter until it reaches a suitable consistency for stuffing.

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.

Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together507 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,979 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs: Form the bulk of the stuffing and absorb the butter and seasoning.
Melted butter: Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavor and keeping the crumbs tender.

The step that matters

Moistening the mixture. Dry crumbs stay crumbly, while overwetting makes stuffing soggy and dense. Add the butter gradually and stop once the crumbs hold together when pressed.

Swap the parsley

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

Thymefits better
Parsleythe original
Winter savoryfits about as well
Rosemaryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sage, pepper, marjoram. 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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Sage Stuffing for Geese or Tame Ducks