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Beef Kidney

Sautéed beef kidney slices served with a mushroom ketchup, lemon, and shallot vinegar gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Beef Kidney

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Trim and slice the kidney.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then dredge in flour.

  3. Fry the slices on both sides until cooked through.

  4. Remove the kidney from the pan and empty it.

Make the gravy

  1. In the same pan, melt butter and add 2 teaspoons of flour, stirring well.

  2. Gradually add boiling water, stirring to create a gravy.

  3. Simmer for 1 minute, then add mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and shallot vinegar.

  4. Optionally, stir in minced herbs and finely chopped onion before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef kidney
Is the main protein, cooked through after being sliced and fried.
All-purpose flour
Coats the slices for a browned crust and thickens the gravy as a roux.
Butter
Provides fat for frying the flour roux and adds richness to the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.
Shallot vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and a mild shallot aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the kidney through without overcooking. Kidney turns tough and rubbery when overcooked, so slices should be fried just until cooked through on both sides and then removed promptly from the pan.

“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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