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Turkey Giblets, Fricasseed
Take one set of turkey giblets; these comprehend the wings, the feet, the gizzard, the liver, the head, and the neck. Clean them all carefully, skin and trim the feet, skin the gizzard and divide it into quarters, cut the neck into four pieces, and the wings and legs each into two pieces; skin, split, and clean the head, and slice the liver. Dissolve two ounces of butter in a stewpan, and put in the giblets, with the exception of the liver, together with a small bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, another of basil, an onion stuck with two cloves, and a little pepper and salt. Fry these ingredients gently till they are lightly browned. Pour over them a pint of stock, and let them simmer gently until done enough. Lift them out, skim and strain the gravy, and thicken it with a tea-spoonful of brown thickening. Put in the giblets once more with the liver, and simmer all gently for ten minutes. Arrange the giblets neatly in the centre of a dish, pour the gravy over them, and serve very hot. Any kind of vegetables may accompany this dish. Time, one hour and a half to simmer the giblets. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward brown fricassee, but the ingredient list assumes a bird sold whole with head and feet attached. Sourcing is the main obstacle; the cooking is simple.
- What counts as gibletsThe Victorian set includes the wings, feet, gizzard, liver, head and neck. A supermarket giblet bag today usually holds neck, gizzard, heart and liver only. An Asian or halal butcher, or a farm supplier at Thanksgiving, may sell feet and heads separately if you want the full set.
- Cleaning the feetFeet are skinned by dipping them in boiling water for about half a minute, then peeling the outer sheath and clipping off the nails. Skip this and the dish will be gritty and yellow-skinned.
- GizzardSplit it, wash out the grit and peel away the tough inner lining before quartering. The muscle wall is what you eat, and it needs the full simmering time to become tender.
- Brown thickeningA standing Victorian preparation of flour cooked in butter until nut-brown, kept in a jar. A teaspoonful of dark roux is the equivalent; a teaspoon of flour whisked into a little of the hot gravy will also do, though it lacks the toasted flavour.
- Stewpan and stockA stewpan is a wide, straight-sided saucepan with a lid, so a sauté pan or small Dutch oven suits. A pint here is the imperial pint, 20 fl oz, so use 2 1/2 cups of turkey or chicken stock.
- Hold the liver backThe instruction to add the liver only for the last ten minutes is the hinge of the recipe. An hour and a half of simmering turns liver grainy and bitter, and it clouds the gravy.
- Heat and timeKeep the pan at a bare simmer, barely trembling. Ninety minutes is right for gizzard and feet; necks and wings may be tender sooner, so lift out anything that is done and return it at the end.
- ServingFeeds three or four as a light main course. Boiled potatoes, turnips or buttered carrots suit the dark gravy, and the dish cools fast, so warm the platter.
Giblet cookery belongs to a household economy in which a bird arrived whole and nothing was thrown away: the breast and legs went to the table on the day, the carcass to stock, and the extremities to a made dish the next. Cassell's places this among the fricassees, meaning here a stew of small pieces finished in its own thickened gravy rather than the pale, cream-bound version the word could equally imply in English. The presence of feet and head in the list is a fair marker of date, from a time when poulterers dressed birds only lightly. Giblet pie and giblet soup appear in the same tradition, and the widespread survival of giblet gravy at Christmas and Thanksgiving is the last domestic trace of it.