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Kidney Soup

A hearty soup made with beef bones, vegetables, spices, and sliced ox kidney, thickened with cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make the butter or dripping hot in a soup pot.

  2. Brown the sliced onion in the hot butter or dripping.

  3. Break the bones and cut up any pieces of meat.

  4. Add the bones and meat with all other ingredients and 8 pints of water.

  5. Bring slowly to a boil.

  6. Skim carefully.

  7. Simmer for 6 hours.

  8. Strain through a sieve.

  9. Return bones and vegetables to the pot.

  10. Add 4 pints more water or as needed based on reduction.

  11. Boil for 4 to 5 hours.

  12. Strain again.

Prepare and cook the kidney

  1. Cut the kidney into slices.

  2. Remove fat from the kidney.

  3. Cut the kidney into small pieces.

  4. Fry the kidney in hot butter or dripping.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of cornflour to absorb moisture.

  6. Stir in 1 teaspoon of salt.

  7. Stir in half each of pepper, dry mustard, and sugar.

  8. Stir in 1 pint of water.

  9. Bring to a boil.

  10. Stew slowly for 3 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Add to the stock after removing fat from the top.

  2. Add ketchup and salt to taste.

  3. Add the other tablespoon of cornflour if necessary.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 slow stewing.
Cornflour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated with liquid.
Roast beef bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the stock during long simmering.
Onions
Browning them in fat adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Skim carefully. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and fat that would otherwise cloud the stock and make it greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, clove, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, 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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