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Stewed Kidney

Lamb kidneys simmered in a lemon‑parsley sauce, served hot on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Stewed Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the kidneys

  1. Boil the lamb kidneys whole in water for 5 to 6 hours until tender, changing the water once.

  2. Add a bit of coarse sea salt and black pepper to the water while boiling.

  3. Once tender, remove the kidneys and slice only the soft parts.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, make a sauce with butter, flour, lemon rind, lemon juice, and chopped parsley.

  2. Thicken the sauce until creamy, then mix it with the sliced kidney.

  3. Serve hot on toast.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb kidneys
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, giving it a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it turns creamy and clings to the kidney slices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce until creamy. Flour needs to be cooked while stirred so its starch swells and thickens the butter mixture evenly. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin, grainy sauce.

“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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