The Unique Stuffing Marilyn Monroe Loved To Cook

Iconic celebrities are revered, copied, and meticulously followed both during their lives and after their deaths. Even their favorite meals become fashionable as if by cooking them, we summon their essence and honor their memory. A well-known example is Elvis Presley's favorite peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwich, but Marilyn Monroe's unique stuffing is a much more elaborate combination.

Published in 2010, a book entitled "Fragments" gives fans a glimpse into her private life and innermost thoughts by filling pages with images, personal notes, and letters collected after her death. Among this collection of written artifacts is a recipe for stuffing scrawled on an old notepad in her handwriting. The stuffing is as unique as it is complex, filled with an extensive list of stuffing ingredients including sourdough bread, ground beef, turkey liver, raisins, hard-boiled eggs, three types of nuts, parmesan cheese, not to mention a wealth of aromatics and seasonings.

The first novelty lies in the use of sourdough bread soaked in water and shredded into the foundation of the stuffing. Sourdough bread was only common in San Francisco during the 1950s, alluding to Monroe's fleeting residence in San Francisco while married to Joe DiMaggio. Another unique aspect of the stuffing is the presence of three types of proteins, which essentially make the dish into its own, standalone meal. Parmesan, pine nuts, chestnuts, and raisins add a trifecta of salty, sweet, and savory notes along with a crunchy and chewy textural contrast.

Monroe's elaborate stuffing recipe scribbled onto notepaper in a series of confusing steps and abbreviated words evokes a familiar, homemade feel that any home cook can identify with, which also helps her fans see and appreciate her humanity. Many have attempted to recreate the recipe, which is not only an homage but a timely and labor-intensive feat.

Monroe specifies shredding the bread, chopping the veggies and boiled eggs, and breaking up the meat and liver into similar-sized morsels so that you get to taste every ingredient with each bite. Consequently, the preparation of each ingredient, plus its assembly and hour-long baking time in the oven translates to a minimum of three hours to execute the recipe. The wealth of flavors and textures derived from the final product is worthy of a try, however. Monroe uses the stuffing to fill a turkey or chicken to bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. However, you could also bake the stuffing in a casserole or cast iron pan for a hearty Thanksgiving dressing. 

Stuffing the mixture inside the turkey will infuse it with more turkey flavor while also binding the mixture with turkey renderings as it cooks. If you want to use it as a dressing, you could add raw eggs to the mix to bind it into a more cohesive casserole. Another tip is to soak the bread in chicken or vegetable stock for a richer foundation.