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Kidney Soup

A beef bone soup with ox kidney, vegetables, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the beef bones into small pieces.

  2. Wash, dry, and slice the vegetables.

  3. Remove the core from the kidney and soak it in a pint of warm water with 1 teaspoon of vinegar for 20 minutes.

  4. Wash the kidney in fresh water before adding it to the soup.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the dripping in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the bones, vegetables, and bacon, frying until well browned.

  3. Pour in the water, add the herbs, spices, salt, and pepper.

  4. Bring to a boil, then skim off any foam.

  5. Reduce heat and let simmer for four hours.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Beef bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the stock as they simmer for hours.
Ox kidney
Provides the main meaty body and distinctive rich flavour of the soup.
Dripping
Fat that carries flavour and browns the bones and vegetables before simmering.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly, giving it more body.
Red-currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of acidity to balance the rich, savoury broth.

The step that matters

Frying the bones and vegetables until well browned. Browning creates deeper, roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying leaves the finished soup tasting flat and boiled.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, leek, butter, flour, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, leek, butter, flour, thyme. 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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