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To Stew Giblets

A stew of giblets flavored with salt, pepper, mace, cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Stew Giblets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the giblets with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a small piece of mace.

  2. Boil the seasoned giblets in 1 cup of cream.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix 2 teaspoons of butter with 1 teaspoon of flour and add to the boiling mixture.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Main ingredient; they flavour the cream as they simmer in it.
Cream
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and body to the stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Its starch thickens the cream as the mixture heats.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture to the boiling cream. Flour dropped into hot liquid clumps easily. Mixing it with butter coats the starch granules so they disperse, and stirring while the mixture boils lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cream, butter, flour. 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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