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Kidneys Au Vin De Champagne, Ou Vin Blanc

Kidneys cooked in a sauce of champagne or white wine, butter, flour, parsley, chives, and jus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Kidneys Au Vin De Champagne, Ou Vin Blanc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the kidneys by cutting them into thin slices.

Cook

  1. Fry the slices quickly in a frying pan over high heat with a little butter.

  2. Add the flour, champagne (or white wine), salt, pepper, parsley, chives, and jus.

  3. Let the mixture stew slowly until the sauce is reduced and the kidneys are cooked through.

  4. Serve 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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + chivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + chivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Kidneys
Provide the main meat, which cooks quickly when sliced thin and gives the dish its body.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the slices brown when fried over high heat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquids.
Champagne or white wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and its liquid reduces to form the sauce.
Jus
Adds savoury depth and meaty flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stew slowly until the sauce is reduced and the kidneys are cooked through. Slow simmering lets the wine and jus reduce into a thickened sauce while the kidneys cook through. Cooking too hard can toughen the kidneys, and cooking too briefly leaves the sauce thin and the meat undercooked.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Chivethe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, champagne, pepper, parsley. 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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