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Giblet Soup

A soup made from boiled goose or duck breast meat, broth, herbs, onion, spices, butter, flour, and egg yolk cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 780 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Giblet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Pound the breast meat and bones in a mortar, then boil them in water for an hour.

  2. Mash the boiled mixture and strain it through a cloth to extract the broth.

  3. In a separate pot, combine the giblet liquor with a bundle of herbs, onion, allspice, and black pepper in a muslin bag, and simmer until tender (1.5 to 2 hours).

Thicken and finish

  1. Melt butter in a clean pan, stir in enough flour to make a paste, then gradually add the giblet liquor to thicken the soup.

  2. Whisk egg yolks with cream, strain, and add to the soup before serving.

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. Thyme + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,973 recipes

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

  5. Winter savory + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together863 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast meat
Gives the broth its rich, meaty flavour when pounded and boiled with the bones.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently as they heat, adding body and smoothness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour to form a roux, helping thicken the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in butter to make a paste, then stirred into the liquor.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the soup is too hot they can scramble and curdle. Strain and add them off the heat or at low heat, stirring constantly, for a smooth result.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, cream, lemon, thyme, winter savory, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, cream, lemon, thyme, winter savory, parsley. 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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