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GIBLETS, TO STEW (another way)
Prepare the giblets as before, and simmer them in just as much water as will cover them. Melt three ounces of butter in a saucepan; put into it two large Spanish onions, chopped small. Cover the pan, and let them remain until tender. Add to them gradually the liquor in which the giblets have been stewed, and season rather highly with salt and cayenne. Mix a table-spoonful of flour smoothly with a little water, and add it to the onion sauce. Put in the giblets, and let all boil together for twenty minutes. Time, two hours. Probable cost, giblets, 6d. to 1s. per set. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain braise that turns the trimmings of a bird into a supper dish. The whole character of it rests on the onions being sweated soft in butter before any liquid goes near them.
- What a set of giblets isHeart, gizzard, liver and neck, plus feet and pinions in the period sense. Modern supermarket giblet packs are small; two or three packs, or about 1 lb of hearts, gizzards and necks, will feed four. Ask a butcher for gizzards and necks if the packs are thin.
- "Prepare as before"The usual period preparation was to scald and skin the feet, split the gizzard and wash out the grit lining, trim the greenish gall from the liver, and cut the neck into two or three pieces. Discard the gall bladder entirely; it will make the whole pot bitter.
- Hold back the liverLiver goes chalky and grainy after long stewing. Add it in the final ten minutes, or cook it separately and stir it in at the end.
- The two hoursThe "Time, two hours" most likely covers the initial simmer of the giblets rather than the twenty-minute finish. Gizzards and feet need long cooking to become tender; hearts and necks are done sooner, so pull them out and return them later if you want them intact.
- Spanish onionsLarge, mild, sweet onions. Two large ones is a good deal, near 1 1/2 lb, and that is intentional: they are the body of the sauce. Cover the pan and keep the heat low so they collapse in their own moisture without colouring.
- Seasoning "rather highly"Giblet liquor is bland until it is salted properly. Season the sauce, taste, and season again after the flour has cooked out. Cayenne here is a background heat, not a chilli note; a quarter teaspoon is plenty for four.
- ThickeningA tablespoon of flour slaked in cold water gives a light gravy, not a thick one. Let it boil the full twenty minutes so the flour loses its raw taste; whisk it in off the heat to avoid lumps.
- ServingFour to five as written, over boiled rice, mashed potato or toast. A spoonful of the sauce is also a good base for a gravy alongside the roast bird the giblets came from.
Giblet dishes are a straightforward product of a kitchen where nothing from a bird was thrown away: the neck, feet, gizzard and heart went into pies, soups and stews while the bird itself was roasted or boiled. Cassell's quotes 6d. to 1s. per set. The heavy use of onion sweated in butter, thickened only with a spoonful of flour, is often described as a characteristic nineteenth-century English approach to making a small quantity of meat go round a table. Giblet pie and giblet soup were the more usual English forms; the stew is the everyday version, and the fact that Cassell's gives two methods for it suggests it was cooked often enough to warrant a choice.