Later this week Americans will gather with family and friends for a massive dinner most assuredly involving turkey. But what goes with the turkey, despite angry relatives, is a matter of where you live.
Is it stuffing or dressing?
Each word comes from a different etymological root, and Americans even disagree what each word defines.
Butterball conducted a survey of 1,000 random people in nine different regions, finding that the majority of Americans call it
stuffing. No region was more partial to calling it
stuffing than New England, where 100% of respondents claimed it as such.
On the flip side, the East South Central Region (I don't know--ask Butterball where they got that name), which includes Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, all favor dressing as the word of choice. In total, only 11 states have a
dressing majority--while everywhere else favors
stuffing.
In 2013,
Epicurious did a peak season term search for both stuffing and dressing, and largely found the same result. The only major anomaly Epicurious and Butterball differ on is the state of Nevada, where Butterball claims they call it
dressing. But Epicurious says that
stuffing is the third-most searched for term in Nevada, well ahead of
dressing--so what does Butterball know? In the end, does anyone trust a Thanksgiving dinner cooked in Nevada? No. No they do not.
There's an old adage that
stuffing is what goes inside a bird and
dressing is what's cooked alongside, but there's no validity to back up up those definitions. The famed cookbook
The Joy of Cooking, published continually since 1931, once made such a claim, simply throwing out that interpretation without any facts as to origin. The book's huge popularity potentially influenced generations to come nonetheless.
So what is the etymoligical history of each word? Let's look at both:
Stuffing:
As might be obvious,
stuffing was created out of the verb "to stuff," while adding the suffix "-ing." The modern version was spoken between the 15th and 16th centuries, depending on which dictionary you want to rely upon, but no later than roughly 1538, when it appeared in print. The Middle English
stuff comes from the Old French
estoffe (furniture or material) and
estoffer (equip or furnish). In turn, the Old French comes from the Greek
stuphein (draw together).
Except some etymologists disagree, claiming stuffing really was born out of the Latin
farcire, Which became the French
farcir (stuff), which became the English
farce. Regardless, all agree
stuffing became the norm by the 1500s.
Dressing:
Like stuffing,
dressing is created out of the verb "to dress" with the added suffix of "-ing," but appeared earlier than its counterpart. The Middle English
dressen was popular between 1275-1325, evolving out of the Anglo-French
dresser or
drescier. That came from the very similar Old French
drecier, itself evolved out of the Latin
dīrēctus--following somewhat the same root as the modern word
direct.
Still awake? Boiled down,
stuffing comes from Greek (unless it comes from Latin),
dressing comes from Latin (but it's definitely not Greek).
 |
| When in doubt. |
That doesn't quite explain the disparity in how geographically Americans gravitate toward one word over the other.
One theory put forth argues that stuffing was widely accepted throughout England until the 1880s, when high-minded Victorian society found the word too crude, thus gravitating toward
dressing instead. The theory continues that those who immigrated to America pre-1880 said
stuffing (and thus passed it down), while those who crossed the Atlantic post-1880 influenced the regions with
dressing.
Meanwhile,
some cooks claim it's a matter of cornbread versus typical bread--with the
dressing crowd using cornbread, and the
stuffing masses using white bread.
Even historical food timelines seem at a loss as to how the schism in the word usage came about. The Oxford English Dictionary, which is usually reliable in such matters, describes
dressing--with regard to food--as a
stuffing.
In the end, the linguistic mystery of how a nation became divided really is a matter of what you choose to believe. Greek versus Latin, population ebbs and flows, cookbook influences--there's no concrete answer.
Whatever you want to believe, when it doubt, just call it Stove Top.
