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Beef Kidney Au Vin

A dish of sliced beef kidneys cooked with white wine, butter, flour, and seasonings, served hot with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Kidney Au Vin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Slice the kidneys and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Cook on moderate heat, stirring constantly.

  3. Mix flour with cold butter and add to the kidneys.

  4. Pour in the white wine and stir well.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with chopped parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 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

Beef kidneys
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when cooked gently and briefly.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and helps loosen the cooking juices into a sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth finish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce that coats the kidneys.

The step that matters

Cooking the kidneys over moderate heat. Kidney turns firm and rubbery if overcooked. Moderate heat, with constant stirring, cooks the meat evenly so it stays tender while the sauce thickens.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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