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Kidney Soup

A soup made with bullock's kidney, stock, celery, turnips, carrots, sweet herbs, pepper, salt, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Add the kidney to the stock from a boiled leg of mutton and bring to a boil.

  2. When the kidney is half cooked, remove it and cut it into dice-sized pieces.

  3. Add the chopped celery, turnips, carrots, and tied sweet herbs to the pot.

Simmer and serve

  1. Season with pepper and salt, then let it boil slowly for 5-6 hours.

  2. Add the mushroom ketchup during the last hour of cooking.

  3. Remove the herbs, skim the soup, and serve the vegetables in the soup.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

What each ingredient does

Bullock's kidney
Provides the main meat and rich, savoury body of the soup as it cooks.
Stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the bones through the soup.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour and a fresh, slightly bitter note to the broth.
Turnips
Contribute body and a mild sweetness as they soften during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour, and soften to thicken the soup slightly.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth to the broth near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly rather than boiling hard. A slow simmer keeps the kidney tender and the broth clear. A hard boil toughens the meat and makes the soup cloudy, and the long cook needs regular skimming to remove foam and fat.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, pepper, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, pepper, mushroom, ketchup. 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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