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Giblet Soup

A savory soup made from goose or duck giblets simmered with herbs, onion, parsley, and thickened with flour and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,037 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Giblet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the giblets

  1. Scald, pick, and wash the giblets in warm water 2-3 times.

  2. Cut off the bills, open the heads, and chop the necks and gizzards into moderate pieces.

  3. Break the bones of the legs and place all giblets in a stew-pan.

Make the soup

  1. Add enough cold water to cover the giblets plus 1 pint and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim the surface as it comes to a boil.

  3. Tie the herbs and spices in a muslin bag and add to the pot along with the onion and parsley.

  4. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours or until the gizzards are tender, stirring occasionally.

  5. Skim off 5-6 tablespoons of fat from the top of the pot.

  6. Mix the fat with 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth and stir into the soup.

  7. Add ½ teaspoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of mushroom ketchup, stirring while it simmers for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the spice bag, pour the soup into a tureen, and serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 and rich flavour that the broth is built on.
Flour
Mixed with the skimmed fat, it thickens the soup into a smoother body.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and depth to the simmering broth.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat before thickening. Fat left in the pot would make the flour-fat paste greasy and the soup oily. Removing the surface fat first keeps the thickened soup smooth and clean-tasting.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, parsley, allspice, flour, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
  3. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, parsley, allspice, flour, mushroom, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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