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Giblet Pie

A pie filled with stewed goose giblets, seasoned and baked, topped with a glaze and served with a thickened giblet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Giblet Pie

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 Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the giblets

  1. Clean and half stew the goose giblets.

  2. Cut the leg in half, the wing into 3 pieces, and the neck into 3 pieces.

  3. Let the giblets cool to prevent spoiling the pastry.

  4. Season the giblets with black pepper and salt, then place them in a deep dish.

Make the liquor

  1. Skim the fat from the giblet liquor and heat it in a clean saucepan.

  2. Thicken the liquor with flour and butter or flour and water, then season with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Add a few drops of browning sauce and strain through a fine sieve.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with pastry, brush with egg yolk, and bake for 1.5 hours at 350°F (175°C).

  2. After baking, pour some of the thickened liquor into the pie through a funnel.

  3. Optionally, add cold game or poultry pieces to the pie.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Goose giblets
Provide the main meat and flavour of the pie filling.
Flour
Thickens the liquor into a smooth, pourable sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and helps give the thickened liquor a smooth, glossy body.
Egg yolk
Gives the pastry a golden, glossy browned finish when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavour of the liquor.

The step that matters

Let the giblets cool before covering with pastry. Pouring pastry over hot filling can make the pastry soggy and greasy underneath, so the giblets should cool first, as the record specifies.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg, flour, butter, sauce):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, flour, butter, sauce. 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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