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Kidney Soup

A hearty soup made with ox kidney, beef shin, onions, parsley, and flour, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat and kidney into very small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter or fat in a stewpan.

  2. Fry the meat, kidney, parsley, and onion until brown.

  3. Add the stock or water, salt, and pepper.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Skim well.

  6. Cover and simmer gently for about 3 hours.

  7. Strain the soup.

  8. Pound the meat if convenient, or rub as much as possible through a wire sieve.

  9. Return the soup to the saucepan.

  10. When boiling, add the pureed meat and the flour mixed smoothly with a little water.

  11. Simmer for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve.

  2. Optionally garnish with small pieces of cooked carrot, turnip, or kidney.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox kidney
Provides the main rich, savoury flavour and body of the soup.
Shin of beef
Adds meaty flavour and gelatin that gives the broth body during long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the strained soup so it turns smooth and lightly body-rich.
Butter or good fat
Carries the browning of the meat and onion and adds richness.

The step that matters

Fry the meat, kidney, parsley, and onion until brown. Browning builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flat soup, while over-darkening can make it bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, parsley, 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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