Skip to main content
Main

Beef or Mutton Kidney

Kidneys parboiled, then cooked in cream and butter, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Beef or Mutton Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Parboil the kidneys, changing the water three times and adding a small amount of coarse sea salt to the last water.

  2. Halve the smaller kidneys without cutting them completely open.

Make the creamed gravy

  1. Chop the kidneys finely and cook them in cream until a gravy forms.

  2. Thicken the gravy and add a small amount of chopped parsley.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter in a dripping pan until it smokes, then add the kidneys, turning constantly until cooked through.

  2. Serve the kidneys on a silver skewer or lay them flat on a dish, garnished with 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Beef + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton kidneys
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when parboiled and then cooked through.
Cream
Cooks down with the chopped kidneys to form the gravy, giving it body and a rich texture.
Butter
Fat for searing the kidneys, adding richness and browning their surface.

The step that matters

Heat butter until it smokes before adding the kidneys. Very hot fat sears the outside quickly, browning the surface and locking in juices. Adding kidneys to fat that is not hot enough lets them steam and turn grey and tough.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Pepperfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, cream, butter. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes