About Stuffing and Dressing

Food historians tell us the practice of stuffing (aka dressing, cramming) the cavities of fowl and other animals with mixtures of breads, spices and other chopped items is ancient. The Romans and the Arabs both employed such techniques. "Dressing" and "stuffing," as we Americans know them today, descend from Medieval European (English "forcemeat" and French "farce") culinary traditions.

It is not known when stuffings were first used. The earliest documentary evidence is the Roman cookbook, Apicius'"De Re Coquinaria", which contains recipes for stuffed chicken, hare, pig, and dormouse. Most of the stuffings described consist of vegetables, herbs and spices, nuts, and spelt (an ancient variety of wheat), and frequently contain chopped liver, brains, and other organ meat.

Etymology

Prior to the sixteenth century in England, stuffing was called “farce,” a word familiar to us but differing in meaning, of course, in its present usage. This came from the French farcir which was handed down from the Latin farcire . In Victorian England, “stuffing” became “dressing” and remained so in its emigration to America . Now “stuffing” and “dressing” are used interchangeably in America , widely due to Stove Top's brand of the product referring to it as stuffing, although some places especially in the Midwest still refer to the dish as dressing. It is also rarely named “forcemeat,” a reference both to the methods by which stuffing is inserted into the hollow of the animal to be cooked and a distant cousin of its antiquated usage in farce .

Names for stuffing include 'farce' (~1390), 'stuffing' (1538), 'forcemeat' (1688), and 'dressing'. After about 1880, the term stuffing was replaced by dressing in Victorian English.

What's the difference between dressing and stuffing?

Excellent question, with several possible answers. The recipes and purposes of this item are interchangeable. Arguments can be made on linguistic (word history), regional (common usage), and culinary (stuffing cooked in the bird; dressing prepared outside the bird) fronts.

"In English, the use of the term "stuff" in cookery emerged from a mass of generalized meanings to do with victuals (preserved in the expression 'foodstuff') and non-edible possessions, to become, sometime in the 16th century, attached to mixtures for filling pies. It developed, a little later, into the idea of stuffing the cavity left by the removal of a bone before meat is cooked. The French word farce...also carries other meanings, including that of padding out. It is recorded in English from the late 14th century onwards and eventually gave English the term forcemeat, applied to fine-textured, elaborate mixtures used especially with meat and fish."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 759)

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first print evidence of both terms to the 16th century.

Stuffing

b. Cookery. Forcemeat or other seasoned mixture used to fill the body of a fowl, a hollow in a joint of meat, etc., before cooking. 1538 ELYOT Dict., Fartile, stuffynge, or that wherewith any foule is crammed or franked. 1598 Epulario Hjb, If you can deuise a better stuffing, you may: then fry them in oyle.

Dressing.

4. concretely. That which is used in the preceding actions and processes; that with which any thing or person is dressed for use or ornament.
a. Cookery. The seasoning substance used in cooking; stuffing; the sauce, etc., used in preparing a dish, a salad, etc...
a. 1504. Nottingham Rec. III. 319. For floure and peper, and dressing.

"Dressings and stuffings. Important as it is to America's festive culinary traditions, "dressing" is a term that wants some pinning down. Above all, whether it is interchangeable with "stuffing" is a matter of continual debate. On the one hand, insofar as "dressing" came into use in the nineteenth century as a prim euphemism for the latter term, we can assume it is equivalent. On the other hand, the verbs "to dress" and "to stuff" have historically connoted distinct culinary procedures--the one having to do with the cleaning and preparing of the carcasses of fish or fowl and the other with the making of fillings of all sorts.

In this light, dressing might be viewed as a subtype in the more general category of stuffing, namely, one related directly to meat cookery--whereby filling the animal cavity with various ingredients would simply constitute a later step in the dressing process. This verb-based distinction accords to some extent with the popular notion that, technically, stuffing is the mixture actually inserted into the animal to be consumed, while dressing is the same mixture cooked separately, "on the outside."

At any rate, "stuffing" is the dominant term, while "dressing" inheres in regional vocabularies, particularly in the South and Southeast. When it comes to recipes...dressing is all over the map. A central component of the Thanksgiving repast...it ultimately reflects all manner of culinary considerations, from basic technique to ethnic background and regional and national custom..."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor in chief [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 409)

"Stuffing...The word comes form the verb to stuff and first appears in English print in 1538, displacing the customary forcemeat (from the French farcir, "to stuff) used in the English tradition. After the 1880s, however, Victorian propriety in America made the term "dressing" more acceptable; both stuffing and dressing are still used interchangeably today...Turkeys and most roast poultry and game are stuffed, usually with bread or cornmeal crumbs and various seasonings. Oysters were a very popular nineteenth-century stuffing, and pecan or rice stuffings were often used in the South. Italian-Americans may use a stuffing of sausage, onion, and mozzarella cheese, while dried fruit, potatoes, and apples are customary among German Americans." ---Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 313)

How did early Americans stuff their turkeys?

[1792]
"Turkey.
Truss your turkey as directed for roasting; make a stuffing as follows: take the crumb of a halfpenny roll, rub it through a cullender, a quarter of a pound of beef-suet chopped fine, some sweet herbs, parsley, and lemon-peel shred fine, grate in a little nutmeg, season it with pepper and salt, mix it up with a egg, and put it in the breast of the turkey, put the skin over and fasten it to the back with a skewer; spit it, singe it, and tie paper over the breast, put it before a moderate fire, and baste it well all the time it is roasting; when it is done take off the paper, baste it with butter, sprinkle a little salt on it, and dredge it with flour then take it up, put it on a hot dish, with good gravy, or brown celery sauce under it; garnish with lemon and beetroot, with onion and bread sauce in boats. A middling-sized turkey will take one hour and a quarter, bigger or less in proportion. N.B. You may stuff the breast with sausage-meat, or veal force-meat, as you like it best."
---New Art of Cookery According to Present Practice, Richard Briggs [W. Spotwswood, R. Campbell, and B. Johnson:Philadelphia] 1792 (p. 137)

"Turkey with chestnuts.
Truss your turkey for roasting, take half a hundred of chestnuts, boil them till they are tender, peel them, chop half a dozen very fine, and put in the stuffing as above; take the marrow out of two beef marrow-bones, cut it into pieces, and stuff the belly of the turkey with the marrow and chestnuts; spit it, and tie the vent close to the spit with a string, singe and paper the breast, put it down to a good fire, and baste it well all the time it is roasting; then take off the paper, baste it with butter, sprinkle a little salt on it, and dredge it with flour, to make the froth rise; take it up, and put it into a hot dish; have ready a dozen of the chestnuts split into two, stew them in half a pint of brown gravy, a gill of white wine, two shallots chopped fine, thicken it with a little butter rolled in flour, boil it smooth, pour it in the dish; and garnish with lemon and beet-root, with bread sauce and gravy in boats. N.B. It will take a quarter of an hour longer roasting than without the marrow and chestnuts."
---ibid (p. 137-8)

[1796]
To Stuff a Turkey/American Cookery, Amelia Simmons

[1803]
To Roast Turkey/Frugal Housewife, Susannah Carter