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Giblet Stew

A hearty stew made from giblets simmered with onion, mace, black pepper, all-spice, salt, and thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Giblet Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the giblets

  1. Clean the giblets and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Cover the giblets with cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

  4. Add the onion, mace, black pepper, all-spice, and salt.

  5. Cover and simmer gently until the giblets are tender, about 1.5 to 2.5 hours.

  6. Remove the pinions when done and keep warm.

  7. Watch the gizzards closely and remove them when tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter, then boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the sauce into a clean saucepan.

  3. Cut the giblets into pieces and return them to the sauce.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and mushroom catsup.

Serve

  1. Serve in a soup dish with slices of bread at the bottom.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Enriches the thickened sauce and adds smooth, rich body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.
Mushroom catsup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum after bringing to a boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise to the surface; removing it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting. Keeping the simmer gentle prevents the giblets from toughening and the broth from clouding.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, pepper, flour, butter, lemon, mushroom, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, flour, butter, lemon, mushroom, 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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