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Beef Kidney, with Wine

A stew of minced beef kidney, parsley, shallot, flour, butter, gravy, and wine, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot 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 ↓

Beef Kidney, with Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the beef kidney.

  2. Chop the parsley and shallot, then mix with the minced kidney.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Dredge the mixture with flour.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the mixture.

  2. Let it stew until tender.

  3. Add the rich gravy and wine, then stir well.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef kidney
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender with slow cooking.
Flour
Coats the mixture and thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mixture brown lightly in the pan.
Rich gravy
Supplies liquid and savoury depth that forms the body of the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the richness of the kidney and gravy.

The step that matters

Let it stew until tender. Kidney is tough if cooked too briefly; slow, gentle simmering breaks down its connective tissue, so it must be cooked long enough to become tender.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, shallot, pepper, flour, butter, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, shallot, pepper, flour, butter, wine. 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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