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Kidneys on Toast

Kidneys on Toast is a dish of fried sheep kidneys served on buttered toast with bacon, fried bread, parsley, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Kidneys on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the kidneys in the butter until cooked.

  2. Chop the cooked kidneys finely.

  3. Mix the flour into the butter.

  4. Add the stock and sauces.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  6. Skim the mixture well.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the chopped kidneys.

  2. Cook slowly for twenty minutes.

  3. Serve on hot buttered toast, garnished with rolls of bacon and fried bread dipped in chopped parsley and grated cheese.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's kidneys
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender with slow cooking in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying of the kidneys and enriches the base of the sauce with fat and flavour.
Flour
Mixed into the butter to form a roux that thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth and moisture.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the flour into the butter. The flour must be cooked with the fat to form a roux before liquid is added; otherwise the sauce may stay floury or form lumps.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, bread, cheese):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, bread, cheese. 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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