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Ox Kidney with Spanish Onion

A stew of ox kidney simmered with Spanish onion, mustard flour, cloves, pepper, mace, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,310 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox Kidney with Spanish Onion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Core the ox kidney and cut it into several pieces.

  2. Place the kidney in a pot with cold water, minced onion, salt, mustard flour, cloves, white pepper, and mace.

Simmer and finish

  1. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Add the leek, carrot, celery, and potatoes on top, sprinkling salt on the potatoes.

  3. Cover tightly and cook until the vegetables are tender.

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. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + leektop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox kidney
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Potatoes
Add starch that thickens the stew slightly and gives it body as they soften.
Spanish onion
Adds savory sweetness and flavor that builds into the broth as it cooks.
Leek
Contributes mild onion flavor and soft texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Simmer the kidney for 1 hour before adding the vegetables. Kidney is tough connective tissue that needs long, gentle simmering to break down. Adding vegetables too early would overcook them to mush before the meat is tender.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, flour, mustard, clove, mace, leek, carrot):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, flour, mustard, clove, mace, leek, carrot. 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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