Aunt Charlene’s Cornbread Dressing

• 1 pan cornbread
• 1 large loaf white bread (no heels)
• 1 tsp dried sage
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup onions, chopped
• 1 cup celery, chopped
• 3 eggs, beaten
• broth from boiling neck, gizzards, and liver of the turkey
• canned chicken broth, as needed

My wife’s Aunt Charlene was a hell of a cook.  After Aunt Charlene passed her granddaughter compiled a booklet of family favorite recipes.  This dressing recipe was the first recipe listed.  At Thanksgiving this year I asked several family members to tell me what ingredients were in the annual dressing.  Well, this is what Sherlock uncovered:

1. Before the age of convenience, packaged seasoned dressing mix was not used.  Just an old simple loaf of white bread and sage, salt, and pepper.
2. Somewhere down the line packaged dressing mix replaced the plain white bread.
3. Three eggs!!!  ugh…
4. The gizzard broth gets used for gravy and not the dressing.

And there you go.  The annual Thanksgiving dressing recipe is now (Not) Your Grandmother’s Thanksgiving Dressing because I think Charlene’s recipe was identical to your Grandmother’s dressing recipe.

An unconfirmed recollection from an unreliable source noted Grandmother probably used Jiffy cornbread mix.  If you don’t know Jiffy it was a a small box mix to which you added eggs, milk, and baked.  Boom.  Cornbread.

Fascinating to see how traditional family recipes change yet curiously remain the same.