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Giblet Stew

A stew made with chicken giblets, cream gravy, boiled potatoes, milk, salt, pepper, and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Giblet Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove giblets from the chicken.

Make the stew

  1. In a pot, combine the cream gravy and cold boiled potatoes.

  2. Add the milk and heat slowly over low heat.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Pour into a serving dish and garnish with parsley sprigs.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Cream + potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream gravy
Provides the thick, creamy base that coats the potatoes and carries the flavor.
Cold boiled potatoes
Supply starchy body and bulk, soaking up the gravy as they warm through.
Milk
Thins the gravy and adds moisture and a mild richness as it heats.

The step that matters

Heat slowly over low heat. Milk can scorch or curdle at high heat, and gentle warming keeps the gravy smooth while the potatoes heat through evenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, potato, milk, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, potato, milk, pepper. 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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