Skip to main content
Main

Giblet Soup

A soup made from goose or duck giblets simmered with herbs, onion, and spices, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Giblet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the giblets

  1. Wash the giblets in warm water two or three times.

  2. Break the bones, cut the neck and gizzards into pieces, and split the head in two.

  3. For goose giblets, use two sets; for duck giblets, use four sets.

Make the soup

  1. Place the giblets in a pot with 2 pints of cold water and bring to a boil gradually.

  2. Skim off the scum.

  3. Add sweet herbs, pepper, salt, mace, and the onion.

  4. Let the mixture stew for 1.5 to 2 hours until the gizzards are tender.

  5. Remove the giblets and strain the soup.

  6. Thicken the soup with flour and butter, then flavor with catsup or Harvey's sauce.

  7. Serve the giblets and soup together.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Giblets
Provide the meat and rich flavor that form the base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the thickened soup.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor to the stock during stewing.

The step that matters

Bringing the water to a boil gradually. Starting giblets in cold water and heating slowly lets proteins and impurities rise gradually as scum, which can then be skimmed off. Rapid boiling can cloud the broth and emulsify fat into it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, flour, butter, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, flour, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More giblet soup recipes

Chicken 12Duck 7Clear 4Irish 3Lamb 3Turkey 3 See all 146 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes