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Giblets a L'Anglaise
Cut the wings, neck, liver, gizzard and heart left over from yesterday into half-inch pieces. Cut into small dice pieces one peeled carrot, one peeled turnip, one white onion, two leeks and two branches of celery. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a soup pot, add the meat and vegetables and let gently brown for fifteen minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Moisten with three quarts water and half pint of tomato sauce. Season with a tablespoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and two tablespoons Worcestershire sauce. Tie in a bunch four branches parsley, two branches chervil, one bean garlic, one bay leaf, one clove, a sprig of thyme, and add to the pan. Let slowly cook for one hour, add three ounces raw rice and let slowly boil again for another hour. Remove the bunch of herbs, pour the soup into a soup tureen and serve.
A thrift soup built on the giblets from yesterday's roast bird. Two points decide whether it is good: when the liver goes in, and when the rice goes in.
- Liver goes in lateLiver simmered for two hours turns chalky and clouds the broth with a bitter edge. Brown it with the rest if you like, but lift it out and return it chopped for the last ten minutes, or leave it out altogether.
- Rice, not for two hoursThree ounces of rice boiled the full hour the recipe asks for will collapse into starch and thicken the soup to porridge. Long-grain rice wants 18-20 minutes; add it near the end of the second hour rather than at its start.
- "One bean garlic"Apparently a literal rendering of the French une gousse d'ail (a gousse is a pod or husk): one clove of garlic, not a head. It goes into the herb bundle, so use it whole and unpeeled or it will slip out.
- Tomato sauceIn 1906 this means a cooked, sieved tomato purée thinned with stock, not ketchup and not a seasoned pasta sauce. Half a pint (one cup) of passata or plain tomato purée is the closest match.
- SaltThe recipe's tablespoon of salt goes into three quarts of otherwise unsalted water, with the Worcestershire as the only other salty element. Add half, taste after the first hour of simmering, and correct at the end when the liquid has reduced.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh. Its flavour sits between parsley and tarragon; a little extra parsley with two or three tarragon leaves stands in adequately. Dried chervil contributes almost nothing.
- SkimGiblets throw a good deal of grey scum and fat in the first twenty minutes of simmering. Take it off with a spoon before the vegetables cloud the surface, or the finished soup will taste greasy.
- Yield and reductionThree quarts of water simmered two hours uncovered reduces to roughly two quarts — eight to ten servings as a first course. Keep the lid ajar rather than sealed if you want that concentration.
- Getting enough gibletsOne bird's neck, heart, gizzard and liver plus two wings is a slim quantity for three quarts of liquid. Supermarket giblet packs or a few extra chicken wings bulk it out without changing the character.
À l'anglaise — English style — is the tell here: giblet soup was a fixture of British domestic cookery well before it reached a New York kitchen, and it sits alongside giblet pie and giblet gravy as one of the standard uses for the bag of offal that came with every roasting bird. This version comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book, a compendium written by a chef long associated with Delmonico's, which explains why a frugal leftovers soup arrives with a properly tied bouquet garni and a French cutting vocabulary. The opening instruction — "left over from yesterday" — is the point of the dish. In a household roasting a bird regularly, the neck and gizzard were not scraps to be discarded but the raw material of the next day's first course, and the long two-hour simmer is what coaxes gelatine out of parts too tough and sinewy to serve any other way.