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Kidney, Fried

Fried beef kidney slices coated in flour, sautéed in butter, finished with lemon juice, parsley, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Kidney, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the kidney into slices about ½ inch thick and remove the core.

  2. Heat the butter in a sauté pan.

  3. On a plate, mix the flour, salt, and pepper together.

Cook

  1. Dip the kidney slices in the flour mixture and fry gently in the butter for about 20 minutes, turning 2 or 3 times and keeping the pan covered.

Serve

  1. Prepare a very hot serving dish, arrange the kidney neatly in two rows.

  2. Add the lemon juice, parsley, and cayenne to the butter in the sauté pan, then pour over the kidney.

  3. Serve as hot as possible.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Ox kidney
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked until tender and sliced for serving.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown and develop a light crust when fried.
Butter
Fries the kidney gently and adds richness and flavour to the coating.

The step that matters

Fry gently with the pan covered. Gentle heat with a lid keeps the kidney from toughening or scorching on the outside before the centre cooks through. Turning only two or three times lets a floured crust form without tearing the slices.

“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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