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Ox-kidney, Fried

Fried slices of ox kidney coated in flour, cooked in dripping, finished with lemon juice, parsley, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ox-kidney, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the kidney into slices about ½ inch thick and remove the core.

  2. Heat the dripping in a sauté pan.

  3. On a plate, mix the flour, salt, and pepper together.

Fry

  1. Dip the kidney slices in the flour mixture and fry gently in the hot fat for about 20 minutes, turning them two or three times and keeping the pan covered.

Serve

  1. Prepare a very hot serving dish and arrange the kidney neatly in two rows.

  2. Add the lemon juice, parsley, and a pinch of cayenne to the fat in the sauté pan, then pour over the kidney.

  3. Serve as hot as possible.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox kidney
The main ingredient, cooked through gently in hot fat so the slices stay tender.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown and form a light crust when fried.
Dripping
Conducts heat for frying and gives the kidney a rich, savoury flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the richness of the fat and kidney.

The step that matters

Fry gently and keep the pan covered. Gentle heat lets the thick slices cook through without the flour coating scorching. Turning them two or three times browns them evenly, and the cover traps moisture so the kidney does not dry out.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, 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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