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Kidney Soup

A soup made with ox kidney, onions, butter, cornflour, stock, seasoned with salt, lemon juice, and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in the butter.

  2. Strain the onions out and return the butter to the saucepan.

  3. Stir in the cornflour until well mixed.

  4. Pour in the stock and stir until it boils.

  5. Slice the kidney into small pieces and add it to the pot.

  6. Simmer very gently for one hour.

Season and serve

  1. Just before serving, season with salt and a little lemon juice.

  2. Pour into a tureen and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 and savoury body of the soup.
Cornflour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied soup as it heats.
Butter
Carries the onion flavour and adds richness when frying.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown in butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the kidney and thickener cook in.

The step that matters

Simmer very gently for one hour. Boiling vigorously toughens kidney muscle and can break up the thickened liquid. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the cornflour smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, 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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