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Stuffing for Chicken, Duck or Turkey

A savory stuffing made with gizzard, liver, heart, onion, bread, and butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Stuffing for Chicken, Duck or Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the gizzard, liver, and heart until tender.

  2. Chop the cooked organs finely with the onion.

  3. Soak the bread in the cooking liquid from the liver.

Combine

  1. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  2. Add the butter and mix well.

  3. Optionally, substitute sage for the onion.

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 + sagetop 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. Liver + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).

  5. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked in cooking liquid, it absorbs moisture and gives the stuffing its body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and softening the texture.
Liver
Contributes savory, rich flavor to the stuffing.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, bread, pepper, butter. 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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