Skip to main content
Main

A Giblet Pie

A pie filled with boiled giblets, livers, and rump steak in a puff pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

A Giblet Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a saucepan, combine giblets (except livers), water, peppercorns, mace, sweet herbs, and onion.

  2. Cover and simmer until tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a crust and place the rump steak at the bottom, seasoned with salt and pepper.

  2. Add the giblets and livers, then strain the cooking liquid over them.

  3. Season the liquid with salt and pepper, pour it into the pie, cover with the lid, and bake for 1.5 hours.

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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 savoury flavour and body for the pie filling as they simmer.
Rump steak
Adds meaty substance and richness that the stock-based filling surrounds.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and depth to the cooking liquid as it simmers.
Puff pastry crust
Forms a flaky, golden enclosure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Simmering the giblets until tender. Giblets need a long, gentle simmer to break down connective tissue. Rushing this leaves them tough, and a rapid boil can cloud the liquid and toughen the meat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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.

More giblet pie recipes

Oyster 4Goose 3 See all 69 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes