Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Kidney

A stew of diced beef kidney simmered with onion, tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, and thickened with a gravy‑flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Kidney

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Soak the beef kidney in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove all fat and skin, then chop the kidney into small dice-sized pieces.

  3. Place the kidney in a stew pot and cover with cold water.

Stew and thicken

  1. Add the onion, salt, pepper, tomatoes, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Simmer gently for about 1 hour, or until tender.

  3. In a cup, mix the gravy with flour to form a smooth paste.

  4. Gradually stir the paste into the kidney mixture until thickened.

  5. Simmer for a little longer and serve hot.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef kidney
Provides the meaty base of the stew, becoming tender with long, gentle simmering.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the stew a tangy flavour that balances the rich meat.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats with the gravy.
Gravy
Adds savoury depth and extra liquid that carries flavour through the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the kidney mixture. Flour lumps if added dry or too quickly; mixing it into a smooth paste first and adding it gradually lets starch granules disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens without clumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, tomato, sauce, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, tomato, sauce, flour. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes