Skip to main content
Main

Kidney Toast

A toast topped with sautéed sheep kidneys, bacon, parsley, flour, milk, cayenne, butter, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Kidney Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Skin the kidneys and chop them finely.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the chopped kidney, bacon, and parsley; cook gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Sift in the flour and a dust of cayenne.

  4. Stir in the milk or cream until combined.

  5. Season with salt and nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on hot toast.

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 + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Sheep kidneys
Provide the main meat, which cooks down into a soft, savoury filling.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour to the mixture as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the cooking juices so the mixture becomes creamy rather than watery.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the thickened mixture into a spreadable texture.
Butter or salad oil
Carries the cooking and adds richness to the kidney and bacon.

The step that matters

Cook the kidney gently for 10 minutes. High heat toughens kidney protein and can make it rubbery or bitter. Gentle cooking keeps it tender, and the flour needs time to be added after the meat has released its juices so it thickens properly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, butter, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes