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Stuffing for Fowls

A bread and butter stuffing cooked with milk, eggs, salt, pepper, and parsley, used to fill fowls or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffing for Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the bread and fry until light brown.

  3. Pour in the milk and boil until soft.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley.

Finish and use

  1. Beat the egg yolks until frothy.

  2. Stir the beaten yolks into the mixture.

  3. Return the mixture to a slow fire to heat.

  4. Use the stuffing to fill fowls or bake in pans.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Bread
Forms the body of the stuffing and soaks up the milk to become soft.
Milk
Softens the bread and provides moisture for a tender, spoonable texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and bind the mixture, helping it set lightly when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the bread brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten yolks into the mixture. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if added to very hot liquid. Returning the mixture to a slow fire and heating gently helps them thicken smoothly rather than becoming grainy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, milk, 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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