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Stewed Kidneys

A savory stew of sheep kidneys simmered with flour, butter, Worcestershire sauce, sherry wine, and a hard‑boiled egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Stewed Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Cover the kidneys with cold water and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Discard the water and remove the tough middle part of the kidneys.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew the kidneys for most of the day, adding water as needed.

  2. Half an hour before serving, brown the flour and butter in a pan.

  3. Thin the mixture with some of the stew and stir everything together.

  4. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, Worcestershire sauce, and sherry wine.

  5. Add the broken yolk of the hard boiled egg 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Sheep's kidneys
Form the tender meat that is stewed as the main component of the dish.
Flour
Browned with butter to form a roux that thickens the stewing liquid.
Butter
Browned with flour to add fat, nutty flavour and body to the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the stew's seasoning.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.
Hard boiled egg yolk
Crumbled into the sauce to enrich its texture and richness.

The step that matters

Brown the flour and butter. Browning the flour in butter builds a roux that thickens the sauce and gives nutty flavour. Cooking it too briefly leaves a raw floury taste, while over-browning can turn it bitter, so it needs steady attention.

“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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