This article is a shout out to four local cooks who obliged when asked to send their Thanksgiving dressing recipes. Recipes are for dressing, not stuffing and all use cornbread.

“If it has a few slices of sandwich bread, store-bought stuffing mix or a cold biscuit in it, it’s stuffing,” Alda Kay Clark said.

Karen Thorn Merrill defines stuffing as any bread concoction baked inside the bird.

No one can be sure who stuffed that first raw carcass. Googling the question produced a few references to the cookbook entitled, “Apicius de re Coquinaria,” a 2nd century BC and 1st century AD cookbook. Apicius stuffed chickens, rabbits, pigs and dormice, something closer to a squirrel than a mouse that ancient Romans snacked on. Stuffing consisted of vegetables, herbs, nuts, chopped liver and brain, and there was no thermometer to ensure this dish reached 165 degrees.

Southerners use the term dressing more often than folks on the other side of the Mason Dixon Line. Families are fiercely loyal to their own version of Thanksgiving dressing, and the cook who makes it every year.

Brenda Parker always made two pans of stuffing for her family, one using her late husband’s mother’s recipe and one using her family’s recipe.

“James said mine tasted as good as hers,” Parker said.

Merrill’s twin sister, Sharon Mele, makes the dressing every Thanksgiving, because she’s the one that makes it best, according to Merrill. Clark uses her mother’s recipe. Sondra Guillory Tyler uses her grandmother’s recipe. Her name was Grace Smith Malone, but the grandchildren and great grands called her Momma Lone.

“I’ve lived in seven states, and have tasted many types of stuffing and dressing,” Tyler said. Hers was the best. She is the only person I’ve ever known who could put on a pot of dry beans, never lift the lid or stir, but come back three hours later, turn off the pot and have pure perfection. Anytime someone would come into the house no matter the time, she would holler out, ‘There’s food on the stove. Help yourself.’”

None of the recipes submitted by these cooks call for sage, and from the look of the Kroger savings bin a week after the holidays last year, sage is not a popular seasoning here in Southwest Louisiana.

“Save the sage for sausage,” Clark said.

Alda Clark’s Cornbread Dressing

1 pan yellow corn bread

1 pound ground beef

1 chicken boiled and chopped

2 onions, chopped

4 to 5 green onions

1 stalk celery, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

10 boiled and chopped eggs

Chicken broth

Directions: Bake cornbread. Cook ground beef. Chop and saute vegetables. Boil and shop eggs. Crumble cornbread when cool. Add vegetables and ground beef and chicken. Pour in enough chicken broth to make it moist and stir. Add chopped boiled eggs and salt and pepper. Bake in the oven until done at 350 degrees. Stir a couple of times so it won’t be packed like a cake. After browning on top, remove and serve with cranberry sauce.

Sharon Mele’s Cornbread Dressing 

3 to 4 boxes Jiffy cornbread

1 Jimmy Dean sausage roll

1 Savoie dressing mix

1 onion

2 green bell peppers

4 to 6 boiled eggs

2 chicken breasts

1 to 2 cartons chicken stock (or stock from boiled chicken)

Directions: Make cornbread per instructions, preferably at least the day before to let the cornbread dry out. Season and boil the chicken breasts. (Save water for stock if needed). Shred the cooked chicken. Brown the sausage, then mince and saute the onions and half the bell pepper with it. Add the Savoie dressing mix. Cook through. Add the shredded chicken and boiled eggs. Slice the remaining bell peppers into rings to decorate the top. In a large baking dish, crumble the cornbread and mix into sausage mixture. Use the broth to make sure the cornbread is good and moist, but not soaking. Bake at 350 degrees covered for 45 minutes, uncovered for about 15 minutes until golden brown. Use the amount of broth that yields the moistness desired.

Irma Lee Gimnick Parker’s Cornbread Dressing

(From Brenda Parker)

Bag of chicken leg quarters or a whole chicken

Two pans yellow cornbread

1 dozen eggs

Chicken livers

Chicken gizzards

1 cup cooked white rice

Directions: Boil chicken, let cool and debone. (Keep the broth.) Boil livers and gizzard and chop real fine. Boil eggs and chop. Add cooked rice and crumbled cornbread. Mix. Season with salt and pepper. Add broth from the boiled chicken and bake at 400 degrees until brown.

Momma Lone’s Cornbread Dressing

Two skillets of cornbread cooked and cooled

1 dozen eggs, boiled and chopped

2 cans cream of celery soup

2 cans cream of chicken soup

3 to 5 stalks celery, chopped fine

2 to 3 bell peppers, chopped fine

2 onions, chopped fine

2 bunches onion tops, chopped

Chicken broth to taste

Directions: Cook two 10-inch cast iron skillets of cornbread. (Use the recipe below or the mix of your choice.)  Boil, peel and chop a dozen eggs. When cornbread cools, crumble it and mix with vegetables and soups. Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees.

Cornbread

1 tablespoon bacon drippings (or vegetable oil)

2 cups cornmeal or ½ cups cornmeal and ½ cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 large egg

1 ¼ cups buttermilk

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted.

Directions: Put bacon drippings in a 10-inch cast iron skillet. Put it in the oven. Turn the oven to 400 degrees to preheat. Whisk together dry ingredients. Beat an egg in another bowl. Pour in buttermilk and mix. Pour into dry ingredients. Stir in melted butter.