Stuffing vs. Dressing: What Does Each State Call It?

It's a debate as old as time: do you call that famous delicious Thanksgiving side dish stuffing? Or is it "dressing"?

Our friends at Zippia have attempted to settle it once and for all by looking at each state's preferred verbiage for this bready, brothy, sometimes spicy veggie-filled dish. By a margin of 36-14 "stuffing" takes the nod.

Almost everyone directly south of Iowa calls it "dressing" but in the Hawkeye State, where, as you might remember, we oddly learned recently that CORN is our favorite Thanksgiving side dish overall, we are just like our midwest neighbors in Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Wisconsin (Kansas and Missouri being outliers) as well as most of the West Coast. We say it right: "stuffing", of course.

The breakdown was interesting to me. I would have thought the New England and Northeast states would have been all about "dressing" but I'm happy to report that Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island are firmly, and rightly, in the "stuffing" camp.

Check out more of Zippia's findings around this delicious dispute here.

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They used Google Trends to make their determinations based on last November's data, and for kicks and giggles apparently included the term "filling", which not a single state was discovered to have used. Whatever we call it, it's not surprising that it's among the most-searched terms on Thanksgiving Day itself, particularly on how to make it.

Whether we call it stuffing or dressing, most of us just call it amazingly tasty. Hopefully, you'll get to enjoy some this week as we wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!