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Stewed Giblets

A stew of chicken giblets, onions, water, and seasonings, thickened with flour and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Giblets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the gizzard, neck, and liver into pieces.

Make the stew

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan and fry the sliced onions until pale brown.

  2. Add the giblets and water; bring to a boil and skim thoroughly.

  3. Season with pepper and salt, then stew gently, covered, for 1.5 hours.

  4. Blend the flour and ketchup, add to the stew, and boil for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a hash dish with toasted bread slices.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 main meat, which becomes tender during the long gentle stew.
Flour
Thickens the stew liquid into a smooth gravy as it boils.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth after frying until pale brown.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the frying onions.
Ketchup
Adds tomato acidity and sweetness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming after the boil. Skimming thoroughly removes foam and scum that rise when the giblets first boil, keeping the stew clear and free of off-flavors before it simmers.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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