It Isn't Thanksgiving Without Ree's Favorite Dressing (2024)

FAQs

What does dressing mean Thanksgiving? ›

Stuffing and dressing are commonly used as different names for the same thing—a dish consisting of bits of bread (or other starchy things) and various seasonings. The dish can be made by stuffing it (hence the name) inside a turkey or other bird that will be roasted, or by baking or cooking it separately.

But for the Thanksgiving side dish in the South, the term dressing was adopted in place of stuffing, which was viewed as a crude term, during the Victorian era. Although dressing and stuffing are interchangeable terms, the signature ingredient of this Thanksgiving side dish in the South is cornbread.

Well, experts aren't exactly sure, but the first official mention of it can be found in a Roman cookbook called “Apicius de re Coquinaria,” which dates back to the first century AD.

The stuffing that most of us associate with Thanksgiving, with sage and onions and celery, comes from New England, where Thanksgiving was celebrated long before it became a national holiday, and where those flavors were in season in November.

Dressing Is For Midwesterners

Generally, in the Midwestern states, it's called stuffing regardless of the ingredients or whether it's cooked inside a turkey.

The term "dressing" didn't appear until the 1850s, when Victorian nobles took offense at the vulgar word "stuffing." So, it's easy to see why many dressing and stuffing recipes consist of the same ingredients.

While most New Englanders and the majority of West Coasters referred to the dish as “stuffing,” about half of Texans and the majority of Southerners call it “dressing.” Likewise, while most other parts of the country use a base of dried bread, many Texans instead opt for cornbread or dried biscuits.

Stuffing, filling, or dressing is an edible mixture, often composed of herbs and a starch such as bread, used to fill a cavity in the preparation of another food item. Many foods may be stuffed, including poultry, seafood, and vegetables.

dressing noun (FOOD)

a liquid mixture, often containing oil, vinegar, and herbs, added to food, especially salads: Drizzle the dressing over the salad leaves and toss to coat. They serve the dressing on the side for those who are counting calories.

There are only two surviving documents that reference the original Thanksgiving harvest meal. They describe a feast of freshly killed deer, assorted wildfowl, a bounty of cod and bass, and flint, a native variety of corn harvested by the Native Americans, which was eaten as corn bread and porridge.

What meat was brought to the first Thanksgiving? ›

So while our Thanksgiving dinner table has a big ol' turkey plated in the center, the first Thanksgiving table was likely filled with ducks, geese, eels, lobster, and venison. Maybe there was a turkey, but it was either missing or too dry for anyone to literally write home about it.

Thanksgiving Day, annual national holiday in the United States and Canada celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year. Americans generally believe that their Thanksgiving is modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (Pilgrims) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag people.

Bacteria can survive in stuffing that has not reached the safe minimum internal temperature of 165 ºF, possibly resulting in foodborne illness. Even if the meat itself has reached this temperature, the stuffing may not have reached a temperature in all areas sufficient to destroy foodborne bacteria.

That temperature includes any potential stuffing deep in the turkey's cavity. At temperatures below 165°F you risk exposure to salmonella or E. coli, two very scary and gross bacteria. The problem with stuffing your roast turkey is that when the turkey's meat is safely cooked, the stuffing inside still is not.

The turkey comes in because the big birds were plentiful in New England, often distributed to soldiers in the Army. By the end of the century, Smith writes, the typical Thanksgiving meal had a turkey at the center of the feast due to the bird's low price.

Dressing: Sauces for salads are often called dressings. In Western culture, there are three basic types of salad dressings. Vinaigrette, usually mixture or emulsion of salad oil and vinegar, often flavored with herbs, spices, salt, pepper, sugar, and other ingredients.

Dressing percentage, or carcass yield as it is sometimes referred to, is the proportion of ending live weight yielded after animals have been stunned (desensitized), exsanguinated, skinned or scalded, and eviscerated.

Eastern Anatolian fashion reflects elements of the neighboring Kurdish, Armenian, Persian, and to a lesser extent Azeri cultures, such as overall clothing with floral prints, stylish head and face coverings for women, alongside the wide belts for men with floral baggy trousers.

Some people stuff their. Others are dead set against stuffing the bird and opt for baking their stuffing in a baking dish, which means it's called dressing. Some do a combination of both. Some dressing is basic: a combination of dried bread, aromatics, and dried herbs.