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Kidney Soup

A hearty soup made with carrots, onions, cloves, pimento, thyme, kidneys, and thickened with brown flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a saucepan, add enough water for the soup, accounting for evaporation.

  2. In hot fat, brown the chopped carrot and onions, then add them to the saucepan.

  3. Add cloves, pimento, and thyme, and let simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Strain off the vegetables and return the liquid to the pot.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the cut kidneys and boil gently for 1.5 hours.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Thicken the soup with a little brown flour.

  4. For improved flavor, add sherry if desired.

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 + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidneys
Provide the main meat and body of the soup as they cook slowly in the broth.
Brown flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Onions
Browning them in fat builds savory depth that flavors the broth.
Carrot
Browning adds sweetness and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with a little brown flour. Flour must be stirred in smoothly and simmered so its starch swells fully; added lumpy or without cooking, it leaves a raw floury taste and grainy texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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