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Gravy, Kidney

A savory gravy made with beef or sheep kidneys, flour, herbs, butter, onion, and simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Gravy, Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the kidney or kidneys and coat them in flour.

  2. Sprinkle the herbs over the kidneys.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the minced onion.

  2. Add the kidneys and cook over medium heat until the gravy is almost dried up.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and simmer gently for 1.5 hours or until the gravy is perfect.

  4. Strain the gravy and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef kidney or sheep kidneys
Provides the main meat flavour and the body of the gravy.
All-purpose flour
Coats the kidneys and thickens the gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Fat that cooks the onion and carries the flavour of the dish.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.
Dried thyme
Adds earthy herbal aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the kidneys until the gravy is almost dried up. Browning the floured kidneys in fat before adding liquid builds flavour through browning. Stopping at the right point keeps the kidneys tender and lets the flour thicken the water evenly when it is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, parsley, thyme, egg, butter, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, parsley, thyme, egg, 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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