Skip to main content
Main

French Kidney Stew

A French stew of veal kidneys cooked with mushrooms, stock, lemon, sherry, and served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

French Kidney Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Soak and parboil the veal kidney, then dice it.

  2. Season the kidney with parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Fry the kidney in 1 ounce of butter until browned, but do not overcook.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the sliced mushrooms with ½ cup of stock or consommé, thickened with flour and butter.

  2. Add the juice of 1 lemon and ⅓ cup of sherry to the mixture and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the kidneys placed on slices of 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. 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. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal kidney
Provides the main meat, which turns tender when fried briefly and firm when overcooked.
Butter
Browns the kidney and adds richness to the frying surface.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce.
Stock or consommé
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the sauce coats the kidney.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the kidney without overcooking. Kidney becomes tough and dry when cooked too long, because its proteins tighten under sustained high heat. A short, hot fry browns the outside while keeping the inside tender.

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes