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Turkey Giblets, a LA Bourgeoise

A savory turkey giblet dish simmered with butter, flour, herbs, and finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turkey Giblets, a LA Bourgeoise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the giblets well in a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan over low heat.

  2. Add the giblets and brown them.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the browned giblets.

  4. Gradually pour in the water or stock while stirring.

  5. Add the herbs and let simmer uncovered until the giblets are cooked.

  6. Remove the herbs and keep the giblets warm in a deep dish.

  7. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the sauce before serving.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Giblets
Provide the main meat, which is browned and then simmered until tender.
Butter
Fat for browning the giblets and building the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it is mixed with the butter and juices.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when added off the heat before serving.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently. If the sauce is too hot or boiling when they go in, they can scramble and curdle, so add them after the heat is reduced or off.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, parsley, mushroom, egg):

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, parsley, mushroom, egg. 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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