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Kidney and Madeira Sauce

A sauce of kidneys simmered in Madeira wine with butter, flour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Kidney and Madeira Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Trim the outer layer from the kidneys.

  2. Soak the kidneys in cold water for 2 hours.

  3. Drain the water.

  4. Place the kidneys in fresh cold water in a pot.

  5. Boil the kidneys for 4 hours.

  6. Season the kidneys with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Mix the melted butter with a little flour to thicken the sauce.

  3. Stir in the Madeira just before serving.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Kidneys
Form the main body of the dish; long boiling makes them tender enough to eat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and a rich, aromatic depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the Madeira just before serving. Madeira is added at the end so its delicate aromas are not cooked off by prolonged heat, and the sauce stays fresh-tasting.

“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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