Skip to main content
Main

Kidneys and Bacon

Kidneys fried in bacon fat and served with a mushroom ketchup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Kidneys and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Trim the fat from the kidneys, skin them, and cut each into slices.

  2. Mix flour, coarse sea salt, and black pepper on a plate.

  3. Dip each kidney slice into the flour mixture.

Fry the bacon and kidneys

  1. Melt bacon fat or butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the bacon and fry gently over low heat, turning frequently.

  3. Once the bacon is cooked, place it on a serving dish.

  4. Fry the kidney slices in the same fat, turning every minute for about five minutes.

  5. Transfer the cooked kidneys to the dish with the bacon.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour off excess fat from the pan.

  2. Sprinkle flour into the remaining fat and mix thoroughly.

  3. Gradually add water to create a thick sauce.

  4. Stir the sauce over heat until it boils.

  5. Add mushroom ketchup to the sauce.

  6. Strain the sauce over the kidneys.

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

Kidneys
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender when fried briefly and served in sauce.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the pan and the dish.
Flour
Coats the kidney slices and, mixed into the fat, thickens the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the kidney slices. Kidneys turn tough and rubbery if overcooked, so they need brief, frequent turning over sufficient heat. Flour coating helps them brown and keeps juices in.

“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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes