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Turkey with Giblet Gravy

A turkey served with a gravy made from boiled giblets, flour thickening, and jellied cranberry sauce, accompanied by fried oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and cranberry work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Turkey with Giblet Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the giblets

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the giblets in a saucepan and cover with water. Cook for 15 minutes before serving the turkey.

  3. Remove the giblets and chop them in a wooden bowl.

  4. Add the chopped giblets back to the water they were boiled in.

Make the gravy

  1. After the turkey is on a platter, place the dripping pan with turkey drippings on the stove.

  2. Add the giblet mixture to the gravy in the pan.

  3. Mix a little flour with water to create a paste and stir it into the gravy. Boil until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat alongside the turkey.

  2. Serve the turkey with jellied cranberry sauce and arrange fried oysters around it on the platter.

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. Turkey + cranberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Sauce + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + cranberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together268 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Provides the main roasted meat and the drippings that flavour the gravy.
Giblets
Add concentrated meaty flavour to the gravy once simmered and chopped.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy after adding the flour paste. Flour starch only thickens fully when the liquid reaches a boil and is held there briefly. Adding the paste without boiling leaves the gravy thin and can leave a raw floury taste.

“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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