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Kidney Soup

A hearty soup made with sheep or ox kidneys, herbs, vegetables, and stock, thickened with cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the kidneys into small dice, wash, and dry them.

  2. Fry the kidneys quickly in butter, then add to the stock.

Simmer

  1. Tie the herbs and vegetables in muslin and add to the soup with seasoning.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the vegetables, thicken the soup with cornflour, and boil for a few minutes.

  4. If desired, add a glass of sherry before serving.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Kidneys
Provide the main meaty body and rich flavor of the soup.
Cornflour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup when boiled.
Butter
Fat that helps fry the kidneys and carries flavor into the soup.
Onion
Browning adds deeper, sweeter savory flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Frying the kidneys quickly. Kidney turns tough and rubbery if overcooked, so it should be fried briefly over high heat until just browned, then left to finish gently in the simmering stock.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, turnip, onion, carrot, sherry):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, turnip, onion, carrot, sherry. 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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