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Kidney Soup

A soup made with diced sheep kidneys, lean beef, stock, rice, onion, parsley, butter, and seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the kidneys and beef into small dice.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the chopped onion and parsley, and sauté in butter for 10 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Pour off the grease, add the stock and rice, and boil until tender.

  2. Strain the mixture, then pound the meat and rice in a mortar.

  3. Pass through a fine sieve and stir back into the stock.

  4. Heat the soup without boiling and serve with croutons of bread.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's kidneys
Provides the main savoury, meaty flavour and body of the soup.
Lean beef
Adds meaty flavour and body, balancing the richness of the kidneys.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the meat and vegetables.
Rice
Thickens the soup as it cooks and is pounded in to give body.
Butter
Fat for sautéing that carries flavour and browns the onion and meat.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in butter.

The step that matters

Heat the soup without boiling. Boiling the strained soup can cause the fine meat and rice purée to separate and turn grainy, and can toughen the proteins, so it should only be heated gently until hot.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rice, onion, butter, bread, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, onion, butter, bread, pepper. 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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