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Bread Dressing

Bread dressing made with soaked bread, butter, onion, stock, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,907 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bread Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread in lukewarm water, then drain and press dry.

  2. Heat the butter in a skillet and lightly brown the chopped onion.

Cook the dressing

  1. Add the soaked bread, parsley, and soup stock to the skillet.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, ginger, nutmeg, and thyme if desired.

  3. Stir until the mixture leaves the bottom of the pan.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten eggs.

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. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

White bread
Forms the body of the dressing and absorbs the stock and butter.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a cohesive, sliceable texture when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onion brown lightly for flavour.
Onion
Contributes savoury, aromatic flavour when lightly browned in butter.
Soup stock
Moistens the bread and adds savoury depth to the dressing.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs in off the heat. Eggs set when heated, so adding them after removing the pan from heat, rather than over direct heat, helps prevent them from scrambling and leaving the dressing grainy.

Swap the thyme

The recipe marks thyme as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, onion, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, onion, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, 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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