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Pork Kidney, Fritters of

A fried dish of diced pork kidneys coated in a batter of flour, egg white, and oil, served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pork Kidney, Fritters of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove skins and cores from kidneys, then dice them.

  2. Heat butter in a pan, fry shallot slightly, add parsley and kidneys, cook gently for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the butter; if preferred, use it instead of salad oil for the batter.

  4. Make brown sauce, cool slightly, then pour it onto egg yolks while stirring continuously.

  5. Add sauce to kidneys, season to taste, stir over low heat until yolks thicken.

  6. Turn mixture onto a plate to cool.

Prepare the wrapping and batter

  1. Wash caul in salt and water, dry well, cut into 3‑inch squares.

  2. Make a smooth batter with flour, water, salt, and salad oil or butter; fold in stiffly whipped egg white.

Fry and serve

  1. When mixture is cold, divide into small portions, enclose in caul pieces, dip into batter, fry until brown in hot fat.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sauce + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Pig's kidneys
Form the tender, savoury main body of the fritter filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the brown sauce and bind the kidney mixture as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the batter structure that crisps and browns when fried.
Egg white
Whipped into the batter to lighten it and help it puff in the fat.
Pig's caul
Wraps each portion, holding the filling together while it fries.
Brown sauce
Adds moisture and rich flavour to the kidney filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the sauce onto the yolks. Adding hot sauce too quickly to raw yolks can scramble them, so pour slowly while stirring constantly. Gentle low heat then thickens the yolks smoothly into the filling without curdling.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, egg, shallot, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, shallot, butter, flour. 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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