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Kidney Soup

A hearty soup made from beef kidneys, calf head, veal, and various spices, finished with fried meatballs and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Wash and cut the beef kidneys into small pieces.

  2. Fry the kidneys until dark brown.

  3. Boil the kidneys with spices in 4 quarts of water.

  4. Thicken the soup with flour.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the calf's head and harslet until tender, then remove and strain the liquid.

  2. Skim off the fat and cut the meat into 1-inch pieces.

  3. Add the meat, onions, cloves, mace, pepper, and salt to the liquid.

  4. Boil gently for 1.5 hours.

  5. Add the hard-boiled egg yolks and chopped egg whites to the soup.

  6. Serve the soup hot with lemon slices for added flavor.

Make the balls and serve

  1. Chop the remaining harslet and mix with veal, salt pork, brains, pepper, salt, herbs, sage, and 1 egg.

  2. Form the mixture into balls the size of half an egg and fry in butter until golden brown.

  3. Add some fried balls to the soup and serve the rest on a dish garnished with parsley and lemon slices.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Beef kidneys
Provide the main meaty body and rich flavor of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup liquid so it has a fuller body.
Egg
Binds the meat mixture so the fried balls hold their shape.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the soup.
Veal
Adds lean meat and body to the fried balls.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavor to the fried balls.

The step that matters

Frying the kidneys until dark brown. Deep browning builds roasted, savoury flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale kidneys make a flatter-tasting soup, and overcrowding the pan steams the meat instead of browning it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, onion, clove, pepper, egg, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, onion, clove, pepper, egg, lemon. 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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