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Stewed Kidneys

A lamb kidney stew made with butter, flour, beef extract, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Remove the skin from the kidneys and split them in half.

  2. Cut away fat and sinews, then cut into small pieces and wash.

  3. Place kidneys in a stew pan with 3 cups cold water and heat gently to boiling point without boiling.

  4. Let them sit hot for 15 minutes, then strain.

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt butter and stir in flour, cooking until smooth and brown.

  2. Gradually add the strained water, then the beef extract and seasoning.

  3. When this mixture boils, add the kidneys and keep hot without boiling for 30 minutes.

  4. Finally, add lemon juice and serve very 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + lambtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Lamb kidneys
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during gentle simmering.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour to form a rich, smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Beef extract
Adds savory, meaty depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce at the end.

The step that matters

Keep the kidneys hot without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and makes kidneys firm and rubbery, so the mixture should only stay hot while the kidneys cook for 30 minutes.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, lamb, butter, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, lamb, butter, flour. 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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