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Liver and Kidney Stew

A stew of browned liver and boiled kidney served with lemon slices, hard boiled eggs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Liver and Kidney Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the offal

  1. Fry the liver until browned.

  2. Simmer the kidney in 2 quarts of water until done, then set aside.

Make the stew

  1. The next day, slice the kidney and liver.

  2. Put the sliced liver and kidney back into the water the kidney was boiled in.

  3. Add a few spices and thicken with brown flour mixed with 2 tablespoons of butter.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon slices and hard boiled eggs on top, and drizzle with wine.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brown flour (in the method)
Thickens the cooking liquid into a stew-like sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and helps carry flavour in the thickened sauce.
Beef kidney
Provides the main meaty body of the stew after simmering and slicing.
Calves' liver
Adds deep, rich flavour and a firmer, meatier texture to the stew.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma when drizzled over the finished dish.

The step that matters

Thicken with brown flour and butter. Flour must be mixed smoothly with fat before or as it meets hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Stirring while it heats lets starch gelatinise evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, beef, butter, egg, wine):

  1. Applefits about as well
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, beef, butter, egg, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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