Skip to main content
Main

Ox Kidneys

A sautéed ox kidney dish cooked with butter, flour, salt, pepper, sugar, water, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ox Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Slice the ox kidney into pieces about the size of a half crown and double the thickness, avoiding the tough white part.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat until hot but not black.

Make the stew

  1. Add the kidney pieces and stir with a wooden spoon for 3 minutes over a brisk fire.

  2. For each pound of kidney, add 2 tablespoons of flour, ½ teaspoon of salt, ¼ teaspoon of pepper, and 1 teaspoon of sugar.

  3. Moisten with ½ cup of water and ⅓ cup of sherry, adding browning if available.

  4. Let simmer gently for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  5. If the mixture is too thick, add a few drops more water.

  6. The mixture should be thick enough to adhere to the back of a spoon.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Ox kidney
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender with gentle simmering.
Butter
Fat that browns the kidney pieces and carries flavour through the stew.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the stew clings to a spoon.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the rich kidney.

The step that matters

Stirring the kidney in the hot butter. If the butter is too hot and turns black, it will taste bitter and scorch the kidney. Medium heat until hot, not dark, gives browning without burning.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, sugar, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Shallotthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes