Name: Fried Kidneys
Ingredients: kidneys; lightly salted water; coarse sea salt; black pepper; hot grease; onions; gravy (made from pan grease and water)

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fried Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Split open the kidneys and remove the little sack inside.
Soak the kidneys in several changes of lightly salted water.
Cut the kidneys into slices about ¼ to ½ inch thick.
Lightly sear the slices in hot grease, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Fry until browned.
Pack the fried kidneys in cans with peeled and sliced onions that have been browned in hot grease.
Pour hot gravy made from adding water to the pan grease into the cans until filled to within ½ inch of the top.
Cap, tip, and process the cans: No. 2 cans for 45 minutes at 250°F (120°C) or 15 pounds of steam pressure; No. 3 cans for 55 minutes at 250°F (120°C) or 15 pounds of steam pressure.

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.

Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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