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Beef Kidney

Thinly sliced beef kidney fried and served in a mushroom ketchup gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Beef Kidney

Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Cut the kidney into thin slices.

  2. Dust the slices with flour.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the slices in a pan until they are nicely browned.

  2. Remove excess fat from the pan.

  3. Add butter to the pan.

  4. Pour in boiling water.

  5. Add pepper, salt, and mushroom ketchup.

  6. Let the gravy boil briefly.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the kidney.

  2. 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.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 sliced thin and cooked briefly.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown well and help thicken the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the pan for flavour and a silky gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the slices until nicely browned. Browning through the flour coating builds deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, under-browned slices taste flat, and the thin slices can dry out or toughen if cooked too long over heat.

“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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