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Mushrooms and Kidneys

Sautéed kidneys and mushrooms served over mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mushrooms and Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry the kidneys

  1. Split the kidneys and coat them in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the kidneys gently in butter for 15 minutes.

Cook the mushrooms and serve

  1. Remove the kidneys and fry the mushrooms in the same pan.

  2. Add coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.

  3. Place the mushrooms on a hot dish and top each with half a kidney.

  4. Serve garnished with mashed potatoes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Kidneys
Form the main protein; bread crumbs and gentle frying give them a golden, tender crust.
Bread crumbs
Coat the kidneys so they brown in the butter instead of drying out.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the crumb coating and adds rich flavour.
Mushrooms
Soak up the pan juices and butter, adding savoury, meaty flavour and moisture.

The step that matters

Fry the kidneys gently in butter. Gentle heat lets the centre cook through while the bread crumb coating browns evenly. High heat would scorch the crumbs and leave the kidney tough or underdone inside.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, mushroom, 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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