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Kidney Soup

A hearty soup made with ox kidneys, suet, onions, salt, sugar, water, and optional flour, celery seed, parsley, carrots, and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop suet and onions.

  2. Place the chopped suet and onions in a large pot and fry them.

  3. Cut kidneys into small pieces, about the size of a nut.

Cook the soup

  1. Add the kidney pieces to the pot with the seasoning.

  2. Fry the kidneys for five minutes.

  3. Add water to the pot.

  4. Let the soup simmer for 2.5 to 3 hours.

Color and finish

  1. Coat the kidney pieces with flour to help them brown and improve the soup's appearance.

  2. Dissolve 2 ounces of sugar in a small amount of water to create coloring for the soup.

  3. Place celery seed in a piece of cloth and boil it in the soup.

  4. Add chopped parsley to the soup.

  5. Add small pieces of browned carrots and turnips to the soup, if desired.

  6. Stir in 1 pound of flour if a thicker soup is preferred.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox kidneys
Form the main body of the soup and provide its meaty texture.
Suet
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor into the frying onions and kidneys.
Onions
Soften and sweeten while frying, adding aroma to the soup base.
Flour
Coats the kidney pieces to help them brown and thickens the soup when stirred in.
Sugar
Caramelizes into a dark coloring that deepens the soup's appearance.

The step that matters

Let the soup simmer for 2.5 to 3 hours. Kidney is a tough, connective-tissue-rich meat, and long, gentle simmering breaks it down so the pieces become tender rather than chewy.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, onion, pepper, flour, parsley, carrot, turnip):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, onion, pepper, flour, parsley, carrot, turnip. 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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