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Kidneys with Champagne

Kidneys sautéed with bacon, butter, parsley, shallot, flour, champagne, lime juice, and cayenne, served with a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Kidneys with Champagne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins from the kidneys and cut them into small slices.

  2. Cut the bacon into squares and fry it in butter until golden.

Cook and season

  1. Add the kidneys to the pan, shaking it frequently to cook them evenly.

  2. Once cooked, season with salt, pepper, parsley, shallot, and flour; stir well.

  3. Moisten with champagne, ensuring it does not boil to keep the kidneys tender.

  4. Add lime juice and cayenne, adjusting seasoning as needed.

Serve

  1. Serve the kidneys with the sauce, ensuring it is thick but not excessive.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together547 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidneys
Form the main body of the dish and are the protein that the sauce coats.
Butter
Fat that browns the bacon and carries flavour into the pan.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a sauce that clings to the kidneys.
Champagne
Liquid that deglazes the pan and adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.
Bacon
Adds savoury, smoky flavour and fat as it fries until golden.

The step that matters

Moisten with champagne without boiling. Boiling the wine toughens the kidney proteins and can make the sauce thin or harsh, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer or below.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limethe original
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley, shallot, flour, champagne. 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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