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Croustades of Kidney, Reform Style

Bread boats filled with seasoned kidney, topped with white sauce, garnished with parsley, mushrooms, and gherkins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Croustades of Kidney, Reform Style

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the croustades

  1. Carve small boats out of stale white bread.

  2. Fry the bread boats in hot fat until golden, then drain them.

Make the kidney filling

  1. Slice the kidney finely and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Sprinkle the kidney with a little flour and broil lightly in butter.

  3. Add a little lemon juice to the kidney for flavor.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the fried croustades with the kidney mixture.

  2. Incorporate the egg yolk into the hot white sauce and cover the filled croustades with it.

  3. Dress the croustades neatly on a dish and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  4. Garnish with pickled button mushrooms and slices of gherkins.

  5. Place the dish in a 350°F (175°C) oven for a few minutes to heat thoroughly, then serve.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Kidney
Provides the main savoury meat filling, browned in butter for flavour and a tender bite.
Flour
Dusted on the kidney so it browns lightly and helps thicken the juices.
Butter
Fat for lightly browning the kidney, adding richness and a nutty aroma.
Egg yolk
Enriches the hot white sauce, adding richness and helping it set smooth over the filling.
White sauce
Creamy binding that coats the filling and adds moisture and richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich kidney and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Incorporate the egg yolk into the hot white sauce. If the sauce is too hot when the yolk goes in, the egg proteins can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth, enriched sauce. Add the yolk gradually while stirring.

“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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