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Kidney Soup

A soup made with ox kidneys, suet, onions, salt, pepper, water, and optional flour, carrots, turnips, celery seed, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the base

  1. Chop the suet and onions, then place them in a large pot and fry them.

  2. Cut the kidneys into small pieces, about the size of a nut.

  3. Add the kidneys to the pot with the seasoning and fry for five minutes.

Simmer and colour

  1. Add the water and let it simmer for two and a half to three hours.

  2. Coat the kidney pieces with flour to help them brown and improve the soup's appearance.

  3. Dissolve 2 ounces of sugar in water to create a coloring for the soup, aiming for a clear, nice brown color.

Finish

  1. Boil celery seed in a cloth and add it to the soup, along with chopped parsley.

  2. If a thicker soup is desired, add 1 pound of flour.

  3. Add small pieces of slightly browned carrots and turnips for extra flavor.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Kidneys
Provide the main meat, whose texture softens during long, gentle simmering.
Suet
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor as it fries with the onions.
Onions
Frying them releases sweetness and aroma that form the soup's base.
Flour
Coats the kidneys to aid browning and thickens the soup when added.
Sugar
Browns when dissolved and heated, giving the soup its colour.

The step that matters

Simmer long enough. Kidney is tough and only becomes tender after a sustained, gentle simmer. Cutting the time short leaves the meat chewy, so the full two and a half to three hours matters.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, onion, pepper, flour, turnip, celery, parsley):

  1. Carrotthe original
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, onion, pepper, flour, turnip, celery, parsley. 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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