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Stewed Kidneys

A stew of kidneys cooked in butter, brown gravy, lemon, mace, pepper, salt, onion, and thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Kidneys

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the kidneys.

  2. Wipe them dry.

  3. Cut them into pieces.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the brown gravy, lemon juice, grated lemon peel, mace, pepper, salt, and chopped onion to the pan.

  3. Cover the pan.

  4. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  5. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  6. Bring the gravy to a boil.

Serve

  1. Remove the kidneys from the pan.

  2. Place the kidneys on a hot dish.

  3. Pour the gravy over the kidneys.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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
The main meat, which becomes tender when simmered gently in the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries flavor through the pan.
Brown gravy
Supplies the savory liquid that the whole dish is built around.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the kidneys.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with browned flour. Flour must be mixed in smoothly so it does not form lumps. Bringing the gravy to a boil lets the starch swell and thicken it fully, so the sauce coats the kidneys evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon, pepper, onion, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, pepper, onion, flour. 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.

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