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Sauce

Giblet Sauce

A savory sauce made from turkey fat, butter, flour, and stock, finished with chopped giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Giblet Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roux

  1. Drain the liquid from the pan used to roast the turkey.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the turkey fat and butter; heat until browned.

  3. Add flour and continue browning until smooth, being careful not to burn.

Make the sauce

  1. Slowly pour in the strained stock while stirring constantly.

  2. Bring to a boil and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Finely chop the giblets, remove tough parts of the gizzard, and reheat in the sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Turkey fat
Carries flavour and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the roux and helps it brown.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks into a roux with the fat.
Stock
Forms the liquid that the roux thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the roux. Pouring stock in slowly while stirring constantly keeps the roux smooth and prevents lumps, because flour starch must be dispersed evenly before it thickens the liquid.

“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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