I call cranberry sauce "sauce" but really it's a relish or a chutney, because it's not properly smooth, but lumpy.

And Happy Thanksgiving, Buffistas who are celebrating it!

Stuffing is cooked in the bird, dressing is cooked separately.

I wonder if now that most people know that it's not a good idea to actually stuff the turkey that will change? I doubt I will ever use dressing, even though it's been a side for years.

Stuffing here, all the way. Also our stuffing is only bread, butter, onions and summer savory, and nothing like sausage or oysters or nuts goes inside the bird.

I don't understand how sauce and relish can be attached to the same food.

We keep cooking the stuffing inside the bird--the unsafe part is when you leave it in the bird after you take it out of the oven. So we remove it right away, and in my mumblety years of having turkey stuffing, nobody in my family's ever gotten sick from it. And stuffing cooked in the bird is far better than stuffing cooked in a pan, because the turkey juices flavor it so wonderfully.

I doubt I will ever use dressing, even though it's been a side for years.

And this is more what I was talking about, not a cooking definition of the two. Regardless of how you cook it*, there are regions of the country where, if you ask "what do you have for Thanksgiving", people will say "turkey and dressing" and parts where they say "turkey and stuffing" -- it's actually one of the questions that's asked in dialect surveys for mapping projects like this: [link]

* Although now I seriously want to overlay the dialect map with a map of the predominant cooking method to see where and whether they overlap. OMG I AM DORK.

Oh, and I cook it in the pan, but not because of safety -- I like my studressffing* with lots of brown crusty bits, and I like way more of it than would ever fit in the appropriate-sized bird.

* Fake Virginian. So sue me.

Although now I seriously want to overlay the dialect map with a map of the predominant cooking method to see where and whether they overlap. OMG I AM DORK.

I was thinking it would be cool to find the same data....so I think dork is out and perfect conversation here is in.

It's not like we are discussing font types or anything. Chocolate Box font FTW!

I wonder if they get a difference within the same area when they ask the cooks vs. when they ask the non-cooks.

Now I desperately want to watch the West Wing episode when President Bartlett calls the Butterball hotline.

I wonder if they get a difference within the same area when they ask the cooks vs. when they ask the non-cooks.

Probably. S and I were talking this morning (while making dressing, in fact) about how, in contrast to Christmas, the traditional Thanksgiving meal was very much based on everyday food -- some kind of bread dressing could be found with any Sunday roast, so it was something everyone knew how to do -- but now it's become once-a-year stuff that you never see outside of the holidays. The linguistic distinction might just vanish in favor of whatever it says on the packaged stuff (even for those of us who keep making it from scratch).