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Savoury Toasts

Savory toasts topped with kidney paste made from boiled kidneys, butter, flour, and flavored with port wine, red currant jelly, anchovy vinegar, and chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and red currant work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Savoury Toasts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Blanch the kidneys in scalding water.

  2. Dry the kidneys with a cloth.

  3. Make a strong broth from bones or scraps.

  4. Stew the kidneys in the broth until tender.

  5. Remove the kidneys and drain them.

  6. Reserve the cooking gravy.

  7. Pound the kidneys with butter to a paste.

  8. Strain the paste through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in flour until creamy.

  3. Gradually add the gravy.

  4. Mix in the kidney paste.

  5. Flavor the mixture with port wine, red currant jelly, anchovy vinegar, and chili vinegar.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil to thicken.

Serve

  1. Pour the thickened sauce over hot fried toast.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Port wine + red curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 is pounded into a paste that gives the sauce its body and rich flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the roux a smooth, silky texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by forming a roux with the butter, so it sets into a smooth coating.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory depth and moisture.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the savory kidney flavor.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil to thicken. Flour thickens only when the starch granules are heated enough to swell and gelatinize. Boiling fully cooks the flour, so the sauce thickens and loses its raw starchy taste; undercooked flour leaves the sauce thin and pasty.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, port wine, anchovy, vinegar):

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, port wine, anchovy, vinegar. 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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