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Stewed Kidneys

A stew of kidneys cooked with butter, ketchup, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the kidneys for several hours.

  2. Parboil the kidneys until very tender.

  3. Flour the kidneys.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the ketchup, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the kidneys and stew well.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidneys
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through soaking, parboiling and stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the kidneys stay moist in the stew.
Tomato or walnut ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity, giving the stew a tangy, savoury depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Parboil the kidneys until very tender. Kidneys have a tough, strong-flavoured texture, so they must be fully tender before stewing. Parboiling softens the meat and helps reduce its strong taste, and stewing later keeps it from toughening.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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