Giblet Soup
Cut the giblets into small pieces and cook in one pint of water until they are tender; then add one-half onion, a small bunch of soup herbs, two or three cloves and a few black peppercorns. Set three pints of good and highly seasoned stock over the fire and heat. Stir two dessertspoons of flour into a little of the stock until it is like cream in consistency; pour it into the rest of the stock and stir thoroughly; then leave it to thicken on the fire. Add also one glass of white wine, a little worcestershire sauce, a pinch or two of cayenne rubbed smooth in a little stock, and salt to taste. Now let the seasoned stock boil, and skim off any scum that rises; strain into it the giblet liquor, also putting into it all the good pieces of the giblets.
A thin, clear soup built on the odds and ends from a roasting bird — the sort of thing a household made on the day the turkey or goose was drawn. The quantities are workable as written, but a few of the terms need translating.
- What the giblets areHeart, gizzard, neck and liver — the set that came tucked inside a whole bird. From one turkey or goose you will have enough; from a chicken you will want the giblets from two or three. Supermarket birds often omit them, so ask a butcher.
- Add the liver lateHeart, gizzard and neck need 45 minutes to an hour of gentle simmering to become tender. Liver is done in 5 minutes and turns grainy and bitter if boiled with the rest, so drop it in near the end or poach it separately.
- DessertspoonTwo teaspoons, so two dessertspoons is roughly four teaspoons — a generous tablespoon and a bit. That thickens three pints only very lightly, which is the intention: this is a broth with body, not a veloute.
- A glass of white winePeriod usage means a wine glass, commonly reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though the measure varied from book to book. Use something dry. It goes in before the final boil, so much of the alcohol cooks off.
- Soup herbsA bouquet of parsley stems, thyme and a bay leaf, tied or bagged so it lifts out cleanly. The onion half, cloves and peppercorns go in with it and are all strained out at the end.
- Good and highly seasoned stockThe recipe leans entirely on this. Use a strong brown poultry or veal stock; a weak or unsalted stock will leave the soup tasting of nothing but flour and wine.
- Strain, then return the meatThe giblet liquor is strained into the stock, but the tender pieces are picked out and put back in. Chop the gizzard and heart small — they stay firm even when fully cooked.
- YieldAbout two quarts, or six to eight servings as a first course.
Giblet soup belongs to the frugal logic of a kitchen that received birds whole: the giblets arrived free with the roast and were too good to discard, so they became a soup, a gravy, or the filling of a pie. English cookery books had printed giblet soup and giblet pie for well over a century before The Butterick Cook Book (1911) appeared, often made with goose giblets, which are larger and richer than a chicken's. Its presence here is a mark of the book's audience — Butterick sold dress patterns to households that expected to use every part of what they bought, and a soup section of this period will often include several recipes whose real purpose is salvage. The Worcestershire sauce is the late-Victorian signature: a bottled, commercially made seasoning doing the work that a long-reduced stock once did.