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Beef Kidney

A simple beef kidney dish simmered with ketchup, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Beef Kidney

Why it works: Ketchup and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,435 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Slice the kidney.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and ketchup.

  3. Brown in a frying pan.

Stew

  1. Add flour and water.

  2. Let it stew gently for some time.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Beef kidney
Is the main protein, becoming tender with gentle, slow cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a stew-like sauce as it heats.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Let it stew gently for some time. Kidney is tough if cooked hard or too briefly. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue soften while the flour thickens the liquid without scorching.

“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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