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Giblet Pie

A pie filled with seasoned goose giblets, baked with a crust and topped with a browned sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Giblet Pie

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Giblet Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the giblets

  1. Clean the goose giblets and half stew them: cut the legs in two, wings and neck into three, and gizzard into four pieces.

  2. Preserve the cooking liquid and let the giblets cool to avoid spoiling the pie crust.

  3. Season the giblets with black pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Optionally, place a moderately thick layer of rump steak or pieces of cold game or poultry at the bottom of the dish.

  5. Place the seasoned giblets in a deep dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Skim the fat from the reserved cooking liquid.

  2. Thicken the liquid with flour and butter or flour and water.

  3. Season the thickened sauce with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Add a few drops of browning sauce if desired.

  5. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the dish with pie crust.

  2. Brush the crust with egg yolk.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

  4. Pour some of the sauce into the pie through a funnel after baking.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Goose giblets
Provide the main meat and rich flavour of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the thickened sauce.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the crust to promote browning and a glossy finish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the seasoned sauce.

The step that matters

Let the giblets cool before covering with pie crust. Placing pastry over hot filling makes the crust soften and go soggy from steam and heat, so the giblets and cooking liquid should cool first.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Limefits less well

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