Skip to main content
Main

Beef Kidney

Beef kidney slices fried and served with a sauce of butter, flour, water, and optional condiments.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Beef Kidney

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 ↓

Beef Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Trim and slice the kidney.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then dredge in flour.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the slices on both sides until cooked through.

  2. Remove the kidney from the pan and empty it.

  3. In the same pan, melt butter, add flour, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stir in boiling water and simmer for 1 minute.

  5. Add mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, or vinegar for flavor.

  6. Optionally, mix in minced herbs or finely shredded onion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 meat, cooked through in the pan to become tender and savoury.
Flour
Coats the slices for browning and thickens the sauce made in the same pan.
Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, loosened by the roux and simmered briefly.

The step that matters

Frying the slices on both sides until cooked through. Kidney that is undercooked stays tough and can taste strong, while overcooking makes it dry and rubbery. Even slices, cooked through, give a tender texture and browned surface.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, flour, butter, mushroom, ketchup, vinegar):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, flour, butter, mushroom, ketchup, vinegar. 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.

More beef kidney recipes

Stew 16Fried 12in Gravy 8Stewed 5French 3 See all 39 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes