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Kidney Soup

A soup made with ox kidney, butter, flour, water or stock, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, herbs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Cut the kidney into small pieces and fry in the butter until browned.

  2. Remove the kidney from the pan.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add the flour, chopped vegetables, herbs, kidney pieces, water, and seasoning to the pan.

  2. Let everything simmer for two hours with the lid on.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup and serve, reserving some kidney pieces to add back into the soup.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox kidney
Provides the main meat flavour and chewy texture once browned and simmered.
Butter
Fat that browns the kidney pieces and carries flavour into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup has body.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in the broth.
Onion
Builds savoury depth as it softens and releases its aroma.

The step that matters

Browning the kidney. Frying the kidney pieces until well browned creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pieces that are crowded or steamed instead of browned stay pale and taste flat in the finished soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, carrot, turnip, celery, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, turnip, celery, 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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