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Bread Dressing for Fowl

A dressing made from twice baked bread, fowl heart and liver, boiled egg yolks, celery, nuts, butter, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bread Dressing for Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Finely chop the twice baked bread and mix it with the chopped heart and liver.

  2. Add the boiled egg yolks, chopped celery, chopped nuts, and butter.

  3. Moisten the mixture with cream, ensuring it is not too wet.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and sage to taste.

  5. Incorporate the chopped onion and apple, and the optional fat salt pork if desired.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the fowl two-thirds full with the dressing or bake it alongside the fowl.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + livertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Twice baked bread
Provides the dry starchy base that soaks up moisture and gives the dressing its body.
Cream
Moistens the bread so the dressing stays tender rather than dry.
Boiled egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the crumbs into a cohesive mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and a softer, more tender texture.
Heart and liver of fowl
Contribute a rich, savoury meaty flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with cream, ensuring it is not too wet.. Dry bread absorbs liquid gradually, so adding cream in small amounts keeps the dressing moist without turning it soggy, which would leave it dense and pasty once cooked.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, liver, egg, celery, butter, cream, pepper. 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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