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Stewed Kidneys

A stew of sliced kidneys cooked in butter, flour, claret, and lemon juice, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim away the fat and skin from each kidney and slice them thinly.

  2. Dredge the kidney slices in flour and place them in a stew pan.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the butter, salt, and pepper to the pan.

  2. Let the kidneys stew for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the claret and lemon juice, then cook for another 10 minutes.

  4. Serve the kidneys in their sauce, garnished with chopped parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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, becoming tender as they stew.
Flour
Coats the slices and thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the slices brown lightly.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that gives the sauce depth.

The step that matters

Stewing the kidneys gently. Kidneys turn tough and rubbery if overcooked. Keeping the heat low and the stewing time measured keeps the slices tender.

“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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