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Stewed Kidney

A stew of ox kidney with onion, cloves, butter, flour, and a brown sauce, served with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Kidney

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Wash the kidney and remove the hard core.

  2. Stuff the cavity with the onion and cloves, then add the butter.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix the flour with a little water.

  2. Burn some sugar in an iron spoon.

  3. Pour boiling water over the sugar to extract color.

  4. Combine the browned sugar mixture with the flour mixture.

  5. Pour the combined mixture over the kidney.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew in a covered saucepan for 2 hours.

  2. If the gravy is too thick, add a little water or ketchup.

  3. Strain the gravy over the kidney.

  4. Serve with mashed potatoes.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 stew and becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the stew.
Spanish onion
Releases moisture and savory flavor into the kidney as it cooks inside the cavity.

The step that matters

Burning the sugar. Sugar left too long in the spoon turns bitter rather than just dark, and the caramel is then poured into the gravy as its color. Stop heating once it is deep brown and before it smokes.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, clove, pepper. 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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