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Kidneys with Sherry

Kidneys simmered in a sauce of butter, flour, stock, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and sherry, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Kidneys with Sherry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidneys

  1. Drain the kidneys and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Cover the kidneys with cold water and heat gently, ensuring the water never boils. Repeat this process three times.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until browned.

  2. Gradually add the boiling stock or water, stirring with a wooden spoon until it boils for 3 minutes.

  3. Add Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, salt, pepper, and the kidneys. Stir until the kidneys are heated through.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the sherry. Serve garnished with chopped parsley.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Kidneys
Provide the main meat, whose texture becomes tender when gently simmered rather than boiled.
Butter
Carries flavour and, with the flour, forms the base of the thickened sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock, giving body and some browning.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth that rounds out the sauce.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a mellow, slightly sweet acidity when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Keep the kidneys below boiling during the repeated soaking. Boiling toughens the proteins in kidney and makes it rubbery, so gentle heat keeps the meat tender and reduces its strong flavour.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sauce, ketchup, pepper, sherry):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sauce, ketchup, pepper, sherry. 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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