Skip to main content
Main

Giblet Stew

A hearty stew of turkey or goose giblets simmered with herbs, onion, ketchup, anchovy, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Giblet Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a large pot, combine the pinions, neck, gizzard, liver, and water.

  2. Add pepper, salt, marjoram, onion, ketchup, and anchovy.

  3. Bring to a boil and simmer until the giblets are tender.

Finish and thicken

  1. Stir in cream.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix flour and butter to form a paste, then add to the stew to thicken.

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. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Marjoram + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Ketchup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 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

Flour
Forms a paste with butter that thickens the stew as it heats.
Butter
Combines with flour to make a paste that helps thicken the stew and adds richness.
Liver
Adds deep, rich flavor to the broth.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter paste. Flour dropped in as lumps or added to hot liquid without being mixed into a paste can clump and stay grainy. Blending it with fat first coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly and thicken the stew smoothly.

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, liver, pepper, onion, ketchup, anchovy, cream):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Marjoramthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, liver, pepper, onion, ketchup, anchovy, cream. 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.

More giblet stew recipes

Goose 6 See all 14 →

You might also like

Turkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipesTurkey DressingTurkey Dressing24 recipesTurkey PattiesTurkey Patties12 recipes