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Clear Giblet Soup

A clear soup made from goose or duck giblets, stock, marsala, and herbs, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Clear Giblet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 3½ pints of stock.

  2. Scald and clean the giblets, then cut them into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the giblets and onion over low heat until pale golden.

  2. Add the marsala and beef broth, reducing to a glaze.

  3. Pour in the remaining broth and add the bouquet garni, garlic, and peppercorns.

  4. Season with salt if needed and simmer for 2 hours.

  5. Strain the soup into a bowl and let it cool, then skim off the grease.

Finish and serve

  1. Clarify the soup with beef as needed, then heat and serve hot, garnished with finely shredded cooked vegetables.

  2. For a thicker soup, thicken with butter and flour after straining and skim off the fat, serving with fried bread croutons.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provide the meat and rich flavour that form the base of the soup.
Marsala
Adds acidity and sweet, caramelised depth when reduced to a glaze.
Beef broth
Adds savoury depth and body to the soup.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour when fried gently to pale golden.

The step that matters

Reducing the marsala and broth to a glaze. Reducing concentrates the flavour and sugars while evaporating alcohol. If the liquid is not boiled down enough, the soup tastes thin; if it is over-reduced, it can scorch and turn bitter on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, beef, garlic, flour, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, beef, garlic, flour, bread. 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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