Skip to main content
Main

Giblet Soup

A hearty soup made from boiled chicken giblets, vegetables, and stock, finished with a butter‑flour roux and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Giblet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the giblet broth

  1. Boil the giblets in 2 quarts of water for about 2 hours until reduced to 1 quart.

  2. Remove the giblets and chop the hearts, livers, and gizzards coarsely.

  3. Return the chopped giblets to the pot and add the quart of stock.

Make the vegetable base

  1. In a separate pan, fry the chopped vegetables in butter until very tender, about 15 minutes.

  2. Add the flour to the vegetables and stir until browned.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the vegetable mixture into the soup and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cook gently for 30 minutes and serve with toasted bread.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Giblets
Provide the main meaty flavor and body of the broth as they simmer.
Butter
Carries the vegetables' flavor and enriches the base as it fries them.
Flour
Thickens the soup and, once browned, adds a nutty, toasted flavor.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it softens into the base.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until browned. Flour must cook in the fat long enough to lose its raw taste and brown, and it can scorch quickly over heat. Scorched flour gives a bitter flavor and dark specks, while properly browned flour adds nutty depth and thickens the soup evenly once the vegetable mixture is added.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes