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Giblet Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken or turkey giblets, vegetables, and a lemony liver sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Giblet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a stewpan, heat ½ cup of butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion, then the minced carrot and turnip; cook until tender and lightly browned.

  3. Add the giblets.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour, stirring often to prevent burning.

  5. Cut up the giblets and add them to a soup kettle with the vegetables.

Simmer and strain

  1. Stir in 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, and 3 quarts of water or stock.

  2. Let the mixture simmer slowly for at least 3 hours, then strain it.

Finish and serve

  1. Mash the livers with 1 tablespoon of melted butter and 1 tablespoon of browned flour.

  2. Squeeze the juice of 1 small lemon into the liver mixture and add it to the soup.

  3. In a tureen, place the yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs cut into 6 pieces and pour the soup over them; serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 and rich flavour that give the soup its body.
Butter
Carries the cooking of the vegetables and adds richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly as it cooks in the butter and vegetables.
Onion
Builds sweet, savoury depth as it softens and browns in the butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, long-simmered flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, creamy texture to the soup when served.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter. Flour must be cooked briefly with the fat and stirred often; otherwise it can scorch and taste raw or burnt, and it will not thicken the soup evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, turnip, parsley, butter, flour, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, turnip, parsley, butter, flour, pepper. 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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