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Giblet Soup

A soup of goose or duck giblets with celery, carrot, turnip, onions, cloves, mace, bouquet garni, stock, clarified butter, flour, Madeira, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Giblet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the giblets

  1. Scald and skin the claws and ends of the giblets.

  2. Wash them in cold water.

  3. Blanch the giblets in boiling water for five minutes.

  4. Place the giblets in a basin of cold water, wash them, and scrape them clean.

  5. Drain the giblets.

  6. Cut them into pieces about 1.5 inches long.

Make the soup

  1. Wash the celery, carrot, turnip, and onions in cold water.

  2. Peel the onions.

  3. Add the vegetables to the giblets in a stewpan.

  4. Add the cloves, mace, and bouquet garni to the stewpan.

  5. Pour in the second white stock.

  6. Bring to a boil.

  7. In a separate pan, melt the clarified butter.

  8. Stir in the flour to make a roux.

  9. Cook the roux for a few minutes.

  10. Add the roux to the stewpan.

  11. Add the Madeira, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt to taste.

  12. Simmer for about three and a half hours.

  13. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,810 recipes

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

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 flavour and body of the soup as they simmer for hours.
Clarified butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the soup and adds a rich, nutty body.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and a deep, fortified wine aroma to the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Skim off any fat that rises to the surface. Fat released by the giblets during long simmering would make the soup greasy and cloudy if left in, so it should be removed as it rises.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, parsley, thyme):

  1. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  2. Winter savorybetter flavor fit
  3. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, parsley, thyme. 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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