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Bullock's Kidney, Stewed

A stew of sliced kidney cooked in butter, flour, and water, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Bullock's Kidney, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the kidney

  1. Fry the kidney slices in butter until light brown.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Make the gravy and stew

  1. Make a gravy with the butter, flour, and warm water.

  2. Add the kidney slices to the stewpan with the gravy.

  3. Stew over low heat until tender, about 1 hour.

  4. Add mushroom ketchup if desired.

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

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

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Kidney
Is the main protein, becoming tender through long, slow stewing in liquid.
Butter
Fat that browns the kidney slices and enriches the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the warm water into a gravy that clings to the kidney.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy; optional.

The step that matters

Stew over low heat until tender. Kidney is a tough, connective-tissue-rich meat. Gentle, low heat over a long time breaks down collagen slowly, while high heat would toughen the proteins and leave it chewy.

“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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