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Stewed Kidneys

A stew of kidneys cooked with butter, onion, water, gravy, spices, and lemon, served over fried bread or toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut each kidney into three lengthwise pieces.

  2. Warm butter in a frying pan.

  3. Add kidneys, minced onion, water, and gravy before the butter is hot.

Make the sauce

  1. Cover and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  2. Add mace, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Thicken the gravy with brown flour. Boil once.

Serve

  1. Prepare a hot platter with fried bread or toast.

  2. Pour the kidney mixture over the bread. Serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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 become tender with gentle simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the kidneys brown.
Gravy
Supplies the savory liquid that becomes the sauce.
Brown flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the kidneys and bread.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich, savory sauce.
Minced onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the kidneys before the butter is hot. Kidneys added to cool fat do not sear, so they release juices and stew rather than brown. The result is softer and paler, so keep the pan covered and the simmer gentle.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, nutmeg, pepper, lemon, flour, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, nutmeg, pepper, lemon, flour, bread. 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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