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Veal Kidney

A dish of veal kidney mixed with fat, leek or onion, pepper, salt, and egg, formed into balls and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and pepper work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 965 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the veal kidney and some fat.

  2. Add a little leek or onion, pepper, and salt.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll the mixture into balls with the egg.

  2. Fry the balls until cooked through.

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. Leek + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Veal + leektop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Leek + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together294 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal kidney
Forms the main body of the balls and gives them their rich, meaty flavour.
Fat
Adds moisture and richness so the balls stay tender rather than dry.
Egg
Binds the chopped mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.

The step that matters

Rolling the balls with the egg. The egg is what holds the chopped kidney and fat together. If the mixture is too wet or the egg is not evenly worked in, the balls may fall apart in the pan.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, egg. 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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