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Stuffed Kidneys

Kidneys stuffed with bread crumbs, salt pork, parsley, butter, and spices, then broiled and served with sauce piquante.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Split the kidneys lengthwise, leaving enough meat and skin on one side to serve as a hinge.

  2. Brush the inside with melted butter and broil them, back down, over a bright fire for 8 minutes.

Make and fill the stuffing

  1. In a double boiler, combine bread crumbs, cooked salt pork, parsley, butter, pepper, salt, and onion juice; heat the mixture and stir in lemon juice.

  2. Fill the kidneys with the stuffing mixture and secure the edges with a toothpick.

Serve

  1. Pepper the stuffed kidneys and serve with sauce piquante.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Kidneys
Provide the main meaty base that is split, stuffed and broiled.
Bread crumbs
Bulk out the stuffing and soak up the butter and juices.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and salty flavor to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the kidneys and stuffing, and aids browning.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich kidney and pork flavors.

The step that matters

Broiling the split kidneys. Broiling back down over a bright fire cooks the cut surface quickly and sears it, while the rich meat stays tender. Overcooking toughens kidney meat, so timing matters.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, pork, parsley, pepper, lemon):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, pork, parsley, pepper, lemon. 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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