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Beef Kidney

Sliced beef kidney cooked in butter and flour, served with a simple gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Beef Kidney

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Trim and slice the kidney.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then dredge in flour.

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

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

Make the gravy and serve

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

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

  3. Serve the kidney with the gravy and add minced herbs if desired.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter 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

Beef kidney
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender when cooked through.
Flour
Coats the slices, helping them brown and thickening the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan and forms the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the slices until cooked through. Kidney that is undercooked can be tough and unpleasant, while overcooking dries it out. Frying on both sides gives even heat, browning the flour coating and cooking the centre through.

“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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