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Giblets, to Stew
Prepare one set of goose giblets in the same way as for a pie. Cut them into small, convenient-sized pieces, and put them into a saucepan, with a sprig of marjoram, the same of thyme, two sprigs of parsley, a Spanish onion stuck with three cloves, a tea-spoonful of pepper, a tea-spoonful and a half of salt, a blade of mace, and a grain of cayenne. Rub the saucepan once with garlic, and add one pint and a half of stock. Simmer gently until all are tender, and as the pieces of meat become so, remove them until the rest are sufficiently cooked. The liver and pinions will be done enough first, and the gizzard last. When all the pieces of meat are taken out, thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter, heat the giblets, and serve as hot as possible. A few mushrooms, or a table-spoonful of ketchup, and a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice, is an improvement. Time, from one hour and a half to two hours, according to the age of the goose. Probable cost, giblets, from 6d. to 1s. per set. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A thrift dish that depends entirely on staggered cooking: goose giblets are five different meats with five different timings, and the instruction to lift each piece as it becomes tender is the whole technique. Ignore it and the liver turns to grit while the gizzard is still rubber.
- What a "set" containsA goose set means neck, gizzard, heart, liver, wing pinions and often the feet. Modern supermarket giblet packs are chicken or turkey and typically smaller; more than one pack may be needed to stand in for a goose set, or order goose giblets from a game dealer around Christmas.
- "Prepared as for a pie"Split the gizzard, turn out the grit and peel away the tough inner lining; cut the greenish gall sac cleanly from the liver without breaking it; singe any down from the pinions and scald and skin the feet. Chop the neck into two or three lengths through the bone.
- Order of removalThe liver needs 10 minutes at most and is best added late rather than fished out early. Heart and pinions run 45 minutes to an hour, the neck about the same, and the gizzard wants the full 90 minutes to 2 hours.
- MeasuresA pint and a half of British stock is 30 fl oz, about 850 ml or roughly 3 1/2 US cups. A blade of mace is one strip of the lacy aril, perhaps a quarter teaspoon ground. "A grain of cayenne" means the barest pinch.
- SaltA teaspoon and a half of salt plus a teaspoon of pepper assumes unsalted homemade stock. With commercial stock, hold back the salt until the liquid has reduced and been thickened.
- ThickeningWork equal weights of soft butter and flour into a paste, about half an ounce of each, and whisk it into the simmering gravy in pieces. Let it boil a minute or two to lose the raw flour taste before the giblets go back in.
- KetchupIn Cassell's, unqualified "ketchup" is mushroom ketchup, a thin dark salted-mushroom liquid, not tomato. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a teaspoon of Worcestershire and a little soy is the nearest substitute.
- GarlicRubbing the pan once with a cut clove is a Victorian measure of restraint. A crushed clove left in the pot and removed before serving is closer to modern taste and does no harm.
- ServingFour to five as a supper dish. It wants mashed or boiled potatoes, or toast, to take the gravy, and it reheats better than most offal because the gizzard only improves.
Giblets were never sold as a luxury and never wasted: a goose bought for roasting came with its own second dinner attached, and the stew and the giblet pie were the standard uses for it. The dish belongs to the Michaelmas and Christmas goose calendar, when a household would have one set at a time and cook it the day before or the day after the bird. Cassell's prices it at sixpence to a shilling a set — cheap, but bought and sold like any other cut, not a free by-product. The staggered simmering it describes is the sound part: a gizzard is a muscular grinding organ that needs long moist heat to break down, while a liver is essentially cooked the moment it firms, and no single cooking time can serve both.