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Bread

Kidney Toast

A toast topped with veal kidney, fat, eggs, and breadcrumbs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Kidney Toast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the cold veal kidney and fat into very small pieces.

  2. Pound the fat in a mortar with salt.

  3. Mix the pounded fat with the beaten egg whites.

Assemble and bake

  1. Heap the mixture onto toast.

  2. Cover with beaten egg yolks and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  3. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal kidney
Provides the main meaty flavour and the body of the filling.
Kidney fat
Adds richness and moisture, so the filling stays tender when baked.
Egg whites
Beaten to a foam, they trap air and set the filling into a light structure.
Egg yolks
Form a rich topping that sets and browns to a golden coating.
Bread crumbs
Add a crisp, browned surface over the topping.

The step that matters

Mix the pounded fat with the beaten egg whites.. The whites hold air from beating, which keeps the mixture light. Stirring them in too hard deflates the foam, so the filling bakes dense instead of airy.

“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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