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Stewed Kidney

Stewed kidney with onion, butter, spices, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Cut the kidney into small pieces, removing all fat, and let it sit overnight in a covered dish.

  2. In the morning, pour off any blood.

Make the stew

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and cook the chopped onion until soft.

  2. Add the kidney pieces and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Add enough water to create gravy, along with the cloves, allspice, and bay leaf.

  4. Cover and stew for twenty minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy just before serving.

  2. Garnish with finely chopped parsley before serving.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidney
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding base flavour to the gravy.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness to the pan base.

The step that matters

Stew covered for twenty minutes. Kidney is a tough muscle meat, so gentle covered simmering with moisture is what softens it; boiling hard or stewing uncovered can leave it chewy and dry out the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, allspice, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, allspice, parsley. 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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