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Deviled Kidneys

A dish of boiled kidneys seasoned with onion juice, salt, pepper, and served with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Deviled Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Cut the kidneys into thin round slices.

  2. Cover the sliced kidneys with cold water and let them stand for 30 minutes.

  3. Wash the kidneys clean.

Simmer

  1. Place the kidneys in a stew pan with 1 quart of water or stock, a clove, onion juice, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer the kidneys for 2 hours or longer until tender.

Make the roux

  1. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the hot butter and stir until brown and smooth.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Kidneys
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flour for the roux.
Flour
Browned in butter to thicken the sauce and add a nutty, toasted flavor.
Onion juice
Adds sharp, savory onion flavor to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour cooked in hot butter must be stirred constantly. Stop too early and the sauce tastes raw and pasty; cook too long and it scorches and turns bitter. Stirring keeps it smooth and evenly colored before the liquid is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, pepper, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, butter, flour. 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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