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Beef Kidney Stew

A stew of salt pork, beef kidneys, onion, celery, and beef stock served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Beef Kidney Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the diced salt pork in a pot until well done.

  2. Add the cleaned kidneys, chopped onion, and chopped celery.

  3. Pour in enough beef stock to cover the ingredients.

  4. Stew for one hour, then thicken the stew.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, and serve over toast.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef kidneys
Main meat that becomes tender during the long stew and gives the dish its body.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pot, adding richness and savory flavor for frying the other ingredients.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building flavor in the stew base.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, beef, onion, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beef, onion, 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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