Skip to main content
Main

Dressing for Turkey

A savory dressing made from turkey giblets, salt pork, sour apple, bread, egg, butter, sage, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Dressing for Turkey

Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Dressing for Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the giblets until cooked, then chop them finely.

  2. Chop the raw salt pork and sour apple, and mix with the giblets.

Bind and season

  1. Soak the bread in warm milk or water, then mince it with the meat mixture and add one egg.

  2. Add butter, season with sage, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. If desired, substitute a small piece of steak for the giblets.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sage + peppertop 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. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Turkey + sagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked bread absorbs liquid and binds the minced mixture into a moist, tender stuffing.
Egg
Sets when cooked, helping hold the dressing together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the dressing moist.
Sour apple
Adds acidity and a bright contrast to the rich meats.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stuffing.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Applethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pork, bread, egg, butter, sage, 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.

More turkey dressing recipes

Oyster 3 See all 46 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes