Skip to main content
Main

Kidney, Fried

Fried slices of beef kidney coated in flour, sautéed in butter, finished with lemon, parsley, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Kidney, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Heat the butter in a sauté pan.

  3. Mix the flour, salt, and pepper on a plate, then dip the kidney slices in the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the slices gently in the butter for about 20 minutes, turning them 2 or 3 times and keeping the pan covered.

  2. Arrange the cooked kidney neatly on a hot dish.

  3. Add the lemon juice, parsley, and cayenne to the butter in the sauté pan, then pour over the kidney.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Ox kidney
Is the main protein, cooked through and tender when fried gently in butter.
Butter
Cooks the kidney slices and carries flavour, then forms the base of the pan sauce.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown and form a light crust while frying.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and kidney flavour.

The step that matters

Fry gently and keep the pan covered. Kidney turns tough and rubbery when cooked over high heat or too long. Gentle heat cooks it through evenly, and turning it lets the flour coating brown on both sides without burning.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes