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Kidney Soup

A soup made from ox kidney, water, flour, salt, pepper, onion, carrot, turnip, butter, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Wash the kidney and dry it well.

  2. Remove all fat and skin from the kidney, then cut the kidney into small square pieces.

  3. Mix the flour, pepper, and salt on a paper, then toss the kidney well amongst them.

Brown and simmer

  1. Melt the butter in an iron pan until hot.

  2. Add the kidney and flour mixture and stir over the heat until nicely browned.

  3. Add the water, bring to a boil, and skim well.

  4. Add the vegetables and let everything simmer slowly for two hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the vegetables, add the ketchup, and serve hot.

  2. If you wish to serve the vegetables in the soup, cut them into small square pieces and add another pint of water.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long slow simmer.
Flour or oatmeal dust
Coats the kidney so it browns and helps thicken the soup.
Butter or dripping
Fat for browning the kidney and carrying flavour into the pan.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the broth as it simmers.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and body to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stir the kidney until nicely browned. Browning the floured kidney in hot fat builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, under-browned pieces give a flat, boiled taste to the finished soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, carrot, turnip, butter, ketchup):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, carrot, turnip, butter, ketchup. 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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