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Goose Stuffing

A savory stuffing made with boiled onions, sage, bread crumbs, butter or suet, eggs, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Goose Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, peel, and boil the onions in two waters to extract the acrid flavor.

  2. Scald the sage leaves in boiling water for 5 minutes, then dry them.

  3. Once the onions are tender, drain and mince them with the sage leaves.

Make the stuffing

  1. Add the bread crumbs, spiced pepper, and salt, mixing well.

  2. Incorporate the butter or suet and bind the mixture with the 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. 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bombay onions
Provide the bulk of the stuffing, becoming soft and sweet after boiling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and a light, crumbly texture.
Butter or suet
Adds fat for richness and a softer, moister texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together so it holds its shape when stuffed and cooked.

The step that matters

Boiling the onions in two waters. Boiling in fresh water twice draws out the sharp, acrid compounds in the onions. Stopping too early leaves a harsh flavour, which carries into the whole stuffing.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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