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Giblets, Stewed

Stewed goose giblets simmered in stock, finished with a brown butter and flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Giblets, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the giblets

  1. Wash the giblets and cover them with stock and water.

  2. Stew the giblets until tender, removing the liver, neck, and tendons when cooked.

  3. Continue stewing the gizzard until it can be easily pierced with a fork.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In a stewpan, heat the butter and fry the flour until brown.

  2. Remove the giblets and strain ½ pint of the stock into the flour and butter mixture.

  3. Stir the mixture until boiling, season to taste, add the giblets back, and heat thoroughly 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

Goose giblets
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that cooks the giblets and becomes the gravy.
Butter
Carries the flour's flavour and adds richness to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy when fried and then mixed with liquid.

The step that matters

Frying the flour until brown. Flour fried in butter must cook long enough to lose its raw taste and gain colour and nutty flavour, but it can scorch quickly if left unattended. Stirring keeps it even, and the stock is added gradually so the gravy thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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