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Broiled Kidneys

Broiled Kidneys are sheep kidneys cooked over a fire, served on buttered toast with pepper, salt, and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Broiled Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the kidneys open entirely down to the root, but do not separate them. Skin them and insert a skewer under the white part of each kidney to keep them flat.

  2. Rub the kidneys with suet.

  3. Heat a double gridiron over a clear fire.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the kidneys with the inside facing down. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes, turning them to cook the other side to your taste.

  2. Remove the skewer and place each kidney on a piece of buttered toast cut in any fancy shape.

  3. Season with pepper and salt, and place a tiny piece of butter in the center of each kidney.

  4. Serve very hot. If desired, squeeze a little lemon juice over each kidney.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep kidneys
Form the main meat, cooked until tender and browned on the cut surface.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the kidneys moist and helps them brown under the heat.

The step that matters

Broil the kidneys inside-down, then turn them. Kidneys turn tough and rubbery when overcooked, so timing matters. Cooking the cut side first sears the surface, and turning them lets the heat cook through gently to the chosen doneness.

“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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