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Beef Kidney

Sautéed beef kidney slices served with a mushroom ketchup and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Beef Kidney

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 ↓

Beef Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim and slice the kidney.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Dredge the slices in flour.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the slices on both sides until cooked through.

  2. Remove the kidney from the pan and empty it.

  3. In the same pan, melt butter, add flour, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stir in boiling water and simmer for 1 minute.

  5. Add mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, shallot vinegar, and optional herbs or onion.

  6. Simmer for an additional 6 to 9 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 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

Beef kidney
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender-firm when fried briefly and then simmered in the sauce.
Flour
Coats the slices for browning and thickens the butter and water into a sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the flour mixture and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Shallot vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and a mild shallot aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce after adding the flavourings. Simmering for the full 6 to 9 minutes lets the sauce reduce and thicken and the flavours meld. Cooking the kidney until just cooked through in the first frying helps keep it from toughening during the final simmer.

“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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