Recipe Swap - Old Nouveau: Family recipe offers new idea

By: By Michael Hastings | JOURNAL FOOD EDITOR
Published: November 18, 2009

I received eight recipes for cornbread dressing in response to a recent request.

Some were modern versions; some were old-fashioned.

I was intrigued by one of the oldest in the bunch. It has an unusual way of binding the stuffing ingredients together: mixing a puree of raw eggs, onion and bell peppers into the cornbread and other ingredients.

It also has another unusual feature: the addition of baking powder to make the dressing rise in the oven.

Frances Mabe sent in this recipe. She even baked me a batch to try.

Mabe is 82 and still makes this dressing at Thanksgiving. The recipe was handed down to her from her mother, who lived with Mabe until she died at age 94.

But Mabe said that the recipe came from her grandmother, who was born in 1863.

The recipe is pretty simple, and like many other recipes, mixes cornbread with regular bread.

Pureeing the onion and bell pepper spreads their flavors throughout the dressing, Mabe said.

"That's what I like about this. You don't get the distinct flavor of any one ingredient."

She said that the stuffing will fall after it comes out of the oven, so she's not sure why baking powder is used. "This is just the way we always did it," she said. "But it does come out nice and moist."

Grandmother's Corn Bread Dressing

½ skillet worth's of corn bread

12 thin slices of day-old white bread

12 saltine crackers, crumbled

Sage to taste (about 3 tablespoons)

About 4 cups of turkey or chicken broth, preferably homemade

3 raw eggs

1 medium onion, chopped

⅔ cup chopped bell pepper

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

3 tablespoons baking powder

1 stick of butter or margarine

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Crumble cornbread and bread in a bowl. Add crumbled saltines and sage. Add enough broth to moisten to desired taste. (A lot of people like their dressing good and wet, but short of soupy.) Set aside.

2. In a blender, combine eggs with onion and bell pepper. Blend until smooth. Pour over bread mixture. Stir in salt and pepper to taste and the baking powder.

3. Melt margarine or butter in a 9-by-13-inch pan. Pour most of it into the stuffing mixture, leaving a thin coating in the pan. Stir stuffing until well combined, then pour into the greased pan. Bake about 1 hour until set in the center and brown on top.

For a modern Pecan and Apple Cornbread Stuffing, see the Dishing It Out Blog at www.journalnow.com/dishingitout.

Help

□ Wayne Marshall would like a recipe for white-wine pound cake that does not use a cake mix.

□ Barbara Jones of Thomasville would like a recipe for pinto beans like those served at Bojangles'.

Send requests or recipes to Recipe Swap, c/o Michael Hastings, Food Editor, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102; or e-mail to mhastings@wsjournal.com. Please include name, address and a daytime telephone number. Previously published recipes are available in the Recipe Database at www.journalnow.com/swap.