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Stewed Kidney and Macaroni

A stew of sliced ox kidney, onion, and spices simmered in water, served over cooked macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Kidney and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the kidney, then cut it into thin slices.

  2. Melt the butter over medium heat in a stew pan.

Brown the base

  1. Add the chopped onion and fry until soft.

  2. Add the kidney slices and fry until browned.

  3. Stir in the flour, pepper, sugar, salt, and mustard until it forms a paste.

  4. Gradually add the cold water, stirring until it boils.

Simmer and serve

  1. Cover and let it simmer for 2 hours.

  2. Serve hot with cooked macaroni.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, which becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the onion and kidney, carrying flavour and browning.
Onion
Adds aroma and sweetness as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cold water. Adding cold liquid gradually to the flour mixture and stirring keeps it smooth. Dumping it in at once can leave lumps of raw flour that do not dissolve evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, pepper, sugar, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, sugar, mustard. 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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