Skip to main content
Main

Ragout of Ox Kidney

A stew of sliced ox kidney with pickled walnuts, onions, herbs, stock, flour, butter, sherry, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ragout of Ox Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Slice the kidney and fry it quickly in the butter.

  2. Place the kidney in a stewpan with the onions and herbs.

Make the sauce and simmer

  1. Shake the flour into the butter, mix, and gradually add the stock.

  2. Let it boil, then pour over the kidney, cover, and simmer gently for 2½ hours.

  3. Add the walnuts, cut into pieces, sherry, and seasoning, and cook for 10 minutes longer.

  4. Serve very 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Ox kidney
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when mixed with the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when frying the kidney and starting the sauce.
Pickled walnuts
Add a sharp, tangy acidity that cuts through the rich meat and sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce during the final cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2½ hours. Kidney is tough and needs long, low heat to become tender. A hard boil toughens the proteins and can make the meat chewy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, flour, butter, sherry, 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.

You might also like

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