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Goose Stuffing, Soyer’s Recipe for

A savory stuffing made with apples, onions, sage, lemon thyme, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Goose Stuffing, Soyer’s Recipe for

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the apples, onions, sage, and lemon thyme in a stewpan with enough water to cover them.

  2. Once cooked, pulp the mixture through a sieve.

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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Apples
Break down into a soft, sweet pulp that gives the stuffing moisture and body.
Onions
Soften when boiled and add savoury sweetness and bulk to the pulped stuffing.
Sage
Adds its characteristic earthy, aromatic flavour to the stuffing.
Lemon thyme
Adds a light citrus-tinged herbal aroma that brightens the stuffing.

The step that matters

Pulp the mixture through a sieve. The mixture must be fully cooked before sieving, since soft apples and onions pass through a sieve easily but firm pieces will not, leaving a lumpy texture.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, sage, lemon, thyme):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sage, lemon, thyme. 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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