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Kidney Soup

A soup made with ox kidney, carrot, turnip, onions, flour, Yorkshire relish, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Wash the kidney and cut it into pieces.

  2. Fry the kidney in deep fat until browned.

Simmer the soup

  1. Slice the carrot and turnip small, then boil them in 3 pints of water or stock with a little salt for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the kidney to the pot and stew for 2 hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the flour with the Yorkshire Relish and a little of the soup, then stir this mixture in 10 minutes before serving.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes, adding a little pepper and salt to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox kidney
Provides the main meat, with a rich, savory flavor that deepens during long stewing.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the simmering liquid, giving it body.
Yorkshire relish
Adds a tangy, savory note that brightens the rich broth.
Carrot
Releases natural sweetness into the broth as it simmers, balancing the savory meat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour mixture. Flour must be blended smoothly with Yorkshire Relish and hot soup first, or it clumps. Boiling it for 10 minutes thickens the soup and cooks out the raw starch taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, flour, pepper. 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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