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Kidney Stew

A stew of soaked kidneys cooked with butter, flour, sweet cream, kidney broth, egg, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Kidney Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Soak the kidneys in salt and water for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Stew the kidneys until tender.

  3. Slice the kidneys thinly and place them in a stew pan.

Make the stew

  1. Add butter and sprinkle in flour, stirring to combine.

  2. Pour in sweet cream and reserved kidney broth, mixing well.

  3. Chop the hard boiled egg and add it to the mixture along with sherry wine.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long stewing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the stew.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, body-giving sauce.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the stew.
Reserved kidney broth
Supplies savoury liquid that carries the stew's flavour.

The step that matters

Add the flour to the butter and stir to combine. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and stirred smoothly before liquid is added; otherwise it clumps and the sauce stays lumpy and thin-tasting.

“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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