Skip to main content
Main

Kidney Soup

A soup made with kidney, stock, mushroom catsup, Harvey sauce, butter, rice flour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Wash the kidney and season it with pepper.

  2. Roll the kidney in rice flour.

Cook the soup

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and brown the kidney quickly.

  2. Add part of the stock.

  3. Bring to a boil, cooking for a few minutes.

  4. Transfer to a saucepan with the remaining stock.

  5. Simmer for two hours.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Kidney
Is the main ingredient, providing the meat and body of the soup.
Rice flour
Coats the kidney and helps thicken the stock as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps brown the kidney's surface.
Second stock
Forms the liquid base that the kidney simmers in.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Browning the kidney quickly. Searing the floured kidney in hot butter browns its surface through the Maillard reaction, adding flavour. Browning for too long toughens and dries the meat, so work quickly before adding the stock.

“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.

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes