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Giblet Soup

A soup made from turkey giblets, barley, vermicelli, butter, browned flour, parsley, and walnut or mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 865 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Giblet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Stew the giblets in 1 pint of water, covered, until tender.

  2. Strain out the barley and vermicelli from leftover soup and add to the giblet broth.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any foam.

  4. Add the giblets.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter until hissing hot.

  2. Stir in the browned flour.

  3. Add the butter and flour mixture to the soup along with the chopped parsley and ketchup.

  4. Boil once more and serve.

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. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Barley + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Barley + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 of turkey
Provide the main meat and rich flavour for the broth.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Butter
Carries the browned flour and adds richness to the soup.
Barley
Adds body and chewy texture to the soup.
Walnut or mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour stirred into hot fat and then added to liquid needs to be fully combined and boiled through, or it can stay floury or lumpy. Boiling once more lets the starch swell and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, barley, butter, flour, parsley):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, barley, butter, flour, parsley. 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.

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