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To Dress Mutton Rumps and Kidneys

A dish of stewed mutton rumps and kidneys served with rice, seasoned with herbs and fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

To Dress Mutton Rumps and Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the rumps

  1. Stew the mutton rumps in good mutton gravy for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the rumps and let them cool.

  3. Clear the fat from the gravy.

  4. Add rice, onion with cloves, and mace; boil until rice is cooked.

Coat and fry

  1. Wash the rumps with beaten egg yolks, then coat with bread crumbs, pepper, salt, parsley, thyme, and lemon peel.

  2. Fry the rumps in butter until golden brown.

  3. Lard the kidneys and roast them in a Dutch oven.

  4. Drain the grease from the fried rumps before serving.

Serve

  1. Warm the rice in the pan after clearing the fat.

  2. Arrange the rice on a dish, placing the rumps around it with narrow ends towards the middle and the kidneys in between.

  3. Garnish with halved hard-boiled eggs or assorted pickles.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton rumps
Stewing in gravy and then frying gives them a tender interior and a golden, crisp coating.
Egg yolks
Binding agent that helps the bread crumb coating adhere to the rumps.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust when fried in butter.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the coating and adds richness.
Boiled rice
Soft starchy base that absorbs flavour from the mutton gravy and sets the dish on the plate.
Kidneys
Rich, savoury meat that is larded for moisture and roasted for browning.

The step that matters

Fry the rumps in butter until golden brown. Coated meat burns quickly on the outside if the heat is too high, leaving the crumb bitter and the centre underdone. Moderate heat lets the crust brown evenly as the interior finishes cooking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, rice, onion, clove, egg, bread, pepper):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, rice, onion, clove, egg, bread, 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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