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To Dress Beef Kidney

A stew of minced beef kidney cooked in butter with wine or ketchup, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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To Dress Beef Kidney

Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Dress Beef Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Cut the beef kidney into mouthfuls and mince it finely.

  2. Dust the minced kidney with flour.

Cook the stew

  1. Heat butter in a stew pan over medium heat until it boils.

  2. Add the minced kidney to the butter.

  3. Brown the kidney in the butter, then sprinkle with salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Pour in a little boiling water and add the champagne or wine, or mushroom ketchup or walnut pickle.

  5. Cover the pan and let it stew until the kidney is tender.

  6. Serve hot in a covered dish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef kidney
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Flour
Coats the kidney so it browns and thickens the cooking liquid.
Butter
Fat that carries the heat and helps the kidney brown.
Champagne or other wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, gamy flavour of the kidney.

The step that matters

Browning the kidney in the butter. Searing the flour-dusted kidney in hot fat creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or under-heating it makes the meat steam and turn grey, losing that depth before the stewing begins.

“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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