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Kidney Stew

A stew made with kidney, onion, butter, flour, stock, ketchup, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Kidney Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the kidney, dry it, and remove the core.

  2. Cut the kidney into slices.

Brown and thicken

  1. Heat the sugar in a pan until brown, then add the butter.

  2. Fry the chopped onion and kidney slices until brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and fry for a minute.

  4. Add the stock, ketchup, salt, and pepper, and stir until it boils.

Simmer

  1. Cover and simmer slowly for 3 hours.

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. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Kidney (in the method)
Provides the main meaty body and texture of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy as it cooks and boils.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the frying base and carries flavour.
Sugar
Caramelises when heated until brown, adding colour and a deeper, sweeter flavour.
Onion
Softens and browns, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Ketchup
Adds sweet-sour tomato flavour and depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar and frying the kidney and onion. Sugar darkens to caramel only with steady heat and can burn quickly, giving a bitter taste. Browning the meat and onion before adding liquid builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, so they should colour evenly rather than scorch.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ketchup, pepper, butter, sugar, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ketchup, pepper, butter, sugar, flour. 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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