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Kidney Soup

A hearty soup made with ox kidney, vegetables, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Cut the ox kidney into thin slices.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and fry in butter until browned.

  3. Pour boiling water over the kidney to cover and simmer gently for 1 hour.

  4. Remove the kidney, cut it into small pieces, and return it to the saucepan.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add stock, turnips, carrots, onion, celery, and savory herbs.

  2. Simmer slowly for 1.5 hours, then remove the herbs.

  3. Stir in mushroom ketchup and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

  4. Thicken the soup with butter rolled in flour.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

Ox kidney
Provides the main meat and rich, savory body of the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and firm texture after long simmering.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the soup.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the soup as it melts and the flour starch swells in the liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer the kidney gently in boiling water for 1 hour. Kidney is tough and can turn rubbery if boiled hard; a gentle simmer lets its connective tissue soften slowly and keeps the meat tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, turnip, carrot, celery, mushroom):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, turnip, carrot, celery, mushroom. 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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