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Kidney Soup

A soup made with ox kidney, stock, vegetables, herbs, sherry, roux, and fat, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Wash the kidney and remove the core.

  2. Slice the kidney and rinse quickly in vinegar and water, then dry well.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the fat in a stew-pan.

  2. Add the kidney and vegetables.

  3. Brown them all over.

  4. Add the cold stock.

  5. Skim off the fat.

  6. Bring to a slow boil.

  7. Add salt.

  8. Cover.

  9. Boil for 1.5 hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  2. Press the kidney to extract flavor without letting it pass through.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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 and rich, savory flavor of the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries flavor and gives the soup its body.
Brown roux
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty depth of flavor.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that rounds out the savory broth.
Leek or onion
Builds sweet, aromatic flavor as it browns in the fat.

The step that matters

Brown the kidney and vegetables all over. Browning creates Maillard flavors that deepen the broth. Pale, steamed pieces give a flat, grey-tasting soup, so the surfaces need real colour before the stock goes in.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, pepper, sherry, butter. 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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