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Kidney Saute

A sauté of lamb kidneys with onions, garlic, stock, Worcestershire sauce, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Kidney Saute

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the kidneys into marble-sized pieces.

  2. In a skillet, melt the butter and fry the onion until soft.

  3. Add the garlic, salt, pepper, and bay salt, and cook for a minute.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour in the soup stock and thicken slightly.

  2. Boil the kidneys in enough water to just cover them until tender.

  3. Combine the kidneys with the stock mixture and let simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the Worcestershire sauce and sherry just 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + garlictop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb kidneys
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender after boiling and simmering.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while frying the onion and seasonings.
Onion
Softens in butter to add sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base that thickens slightly and carries the flavor.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds tangy, savory depth to the finished sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, added late to keep its flavor bright.

The step that matters

Boil the kidneys until just tender. Overcooking makes kidney firm and rubbery, while undercooking leaves it chewy. Boiling in just enough water to cover keeps the pieces evenly cooked before they simmer in the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lamb, onion, garlic, pepper, sauce, sherry):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lamb, onion, garlic, pepper, sauce, 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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