Marilyn Monroe is our most iconic Hollywood starlet… but could she also cook? Judging by her handwritten recipe for a unique stuffing with a bevvy of ingredients, it’s seemed that she could and often did. Scrawled on a title insurance company notepad, Marilyn’s stuffing includes both unusual ingredients and unusual methods (liver! parmesan cheese! soaked bread!), so we just couldn’t wait to give it a try and see what it was like.

We made this stuffing as a part of our Celebrity Stuffing Recipe Showdown. The showdown is a fun project where we take four celebrity recipes — some celebrity chefs, some not so much — cook them, and then taste and compare them to see how they stack up. This match-up included Ina Garten, Gwyneth Paltrow, Emeril Lagasse, and Marilyn Monroe. We ended up with four very different stuffings!

What’s in Marilyn Monroe’s Stuffing?

Oh, there’s so much in here. And so much that you wouldn’t expect. But first, she writes at the top, “no garlic.” This was likely because she was married to Joe DiMaggio at the time, who famously hated garlic. As for what’s included, let’s get to it. Marilyn calls for:

• Sourdough bread
• Chicken or turkey giblets (livers or hearts)
• Ground beef
• Celery
• Onion
• Parsley, specifically curly
• Hard-boiled eggs
• Raisins
• Parmesan cheese
• Walnuts, pine nuts, or chestnuts OR a combination of all three
• Dried rosemary
• Dried oregano
• Dried thyme
• 3 Bay leaves
• And, finally, poultry seasoning

I told you it was a lot.

How Do You Make Marilyn Monroe’s Stuffing?

The most unique technique Marilyn uses is that she soaks the loaf of bread in water for fifteen minutes and then wrings it out before crumbling it up for the stuffing. There’s no other liquid in the recipe aside from whatever the bread holds on to. It’s an interesting strategy, but we thought broth might be a better choice!

She then has you boil the giblets, brown the ground beef, and combine everything together to mix it up. The onions and celery go into the mixture raw, but the stuffing does bake for a full hour.

How Does It Taste?

It tastes… unique.

If you like liver, you might love this, but there’s just a lot going on in this stuffing. And yet, the liver kind of permeates it all. You’re hit with sweetness from the raisins, an overpowering amount of herbs, and a lot of meaty flavor, but none of it is really playing well together. It’s a creative combo and was fun to try but none of us could see ourselves making this again.

The texture left a lot to be desired too. Because the bread was soaked, it basically crumbled, and combined with all the other finely chopped ingredients, the whole thing had a somewhat mealy texture. We could see a stuffing like this working with some editing of ingredients, and some different techniques.

We made this as part of our Celebrity Recipe Showdown.

To see how it stacked up, read on here:
Celebrity Stuffing Recipe Showdown

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Classic Bread Stuffing
Ina Garten’s Sausage and Herb Stuffing
Emeril Lagasse’s Simple But Fabulous Stuffing