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Stuffing for Roast Fowls

A bread-based stuffing for roast fowls, flavored with butter, seasonings, celery, and optional egg, with optional oysters for boiled fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffing for Roast Fowls

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Moisten stale bread crumbs with milk.

  2. Mix in melted butter, salt, pepper, summer savory, chopped celery, and egg if desired.

  3. Scald dried bread pieces with boiling water. Drain.

  4. Add butter and seasoning.

Add the variations

  1. For ducks and geese, add onion and sage.

  2. For boiled fowl, add oysters.

  3. Boil hearts, livers, and gizzards in salted water until tender. Chop finely.

Finish the gravy

  1. Stir into the dripping pan with the cooking water.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour to make gravy.

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. Summer savory + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the stuffing and absorb the milk and butter to hold a soft texture.
Milk
Moistens the dry bread so it softens and binds evenly.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the stuffing moist.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, butter, pepper, summer savory, egg, oyster):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, pepper, summer savory, egg, oyster. 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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