Name: Giblet Pie
Ingredients: 2 sets of goose giblets; 1½ cups water; 1 teaspoon black pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper; 1 cup of giblet cooking liquid; pie crust for covering; flour (for thickening); butter (for thickening)

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and 124,287 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Giblet Pie

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

Clean the goose giblets well and stew them in 1½ cups of water over low heat until half cooked.
Divide the necks, wings, legs, and gizzards into pieces and let them cool in the cooking liquid.
Once cooled, season the giblets with 1 teaspoon of black pepper, ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, and ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

Bake the pie

Place the seasoned giblets in a pie dish and add 1 cup of the cooking liquid.
Cover the dish with pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1½ hours.

Make the gravy and serve

Skim the fat from the remaining cooking liquid.
Thicken the liquid with flour and butter in a saucepan.
Season the gravy with pepper and salt to taste.
Bring the gravy to a boil.
Before serving, lift the crust on one side and pour in the gravy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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 slow stewing and baking.
Flour: Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the flour thicken the gravy smoothly.

“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.