Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Kidneys and Macaroni

A stew of kidneys and macaroni cooked in stock with butter, parsley, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Kidneys and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil water in a pot and season with salt.

  2. Add macaroni and cook for about 20 minutes until soft but not broken.

  3. While the macaroni cooks, skin and halve the kidneys.

Make the stew

  1. In a frying pan, melt butter and add the kidneys, tossing for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle with parsley, pepper, and salt, then pour in the stock.

  3. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer on low heat for 5 minutes.

  4. Transfer the kidneys to a hot serving dish, boil the gravy, and pour over the kidneys.

Serve

  1. Arrange the macaroni around the dish as a border and 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidneys
Provide the main meaty texture and rich flavour of the stew.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps sear the kidneys in the pan.
Stock
Forms the liquid gravy that moistens the kidneys and carries flavour.
Macaroni
Adds a soft, starchy base that absorbs some of the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering the kidneys after adding stock. Kidneys turn tough and rubbery if overcooked, so keep the heat low and the simmer short. Boiling hard after adding stock can toughen the meat and reduce the gravy unevenly.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes