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Kidney Pie

Kidney pie is a savory pie made with veal kidneys, calf's foot, force‑meat balls, yolks, and a stock mixture, baked in crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Kidney Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the veal kidneys about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Scald, clean, bone, and slice the calf's foot in the same way.

  3. Season the kidney and calf's foot slices with salt, cayenne, and cloves.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the kidney slices in a pie dish, sprinkle with minced ham, add calf's foot, more ham, and kidney slices again.

  2. Fill with yolks of hard-boiled eggs and force-meat balls.

  3. Pour in veal stock mixed with lemon juice and sherry.

  4. Cover with pie crust and bake for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal kidneys
Provide the main meat body and rich, savory flavor of the pie.
Calf's foot
Releases gelatin as it cooks, helping the filling set firm when chilled.
Veal stock
Adds moisture and savory depth that keeps the filling from drying out in the oven.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add a rich, creamy texture that softens the meat's firmness.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness that balance the rich meats.

The step that matters

Cover with pie crust and bake for 1.5 hours. The long, enclosed bake must cook the kidney fully while keeping the filling moist. Too high heat or too short a time leaves the meat tough or underdone, and the calf's foot needs the full time to release enough gelatin to set the filling when cold.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, ham, egg, meat, lemon, sherry):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, ham, egg, meat, lemon, sherry. 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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