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To Stew Goose Giblets

A stew of goose giblets simmered in stock with herbs, spices, onions, and catsup, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Stew Goose Giblets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the giblets

  1. Clean the giblets thoroughly and parboil them.

  2. Cut the necks into three pieces, the gizzards into four pieces, and the livers, pinions, and heads into two pieces.

  3. Remove the outer skin from the feet.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the giblets in the stock with sweet herbs, peppercorns, cloves, anchovy, onions, and catsup.

  2. Remove the giblets.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter.

  5. Add white wine or cream.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the giblets to the sauce.

  2. Serve hot with thin toasted bread around the dish.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

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

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

Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with liquid as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and helps form a smooth, thickened sauce with the flour.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the stewing liquid.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the sauce, often without a distinct fishy taste.
White wine or cream
Adds acidity or richness that brightens and smooths the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in the butter before or as the liquid goes in, or it stays pasty and lumpy. Cooking it lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, onion, flour, butter, white wine, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, onion, flour, butter, white wine, bread. 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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