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Beef Kidney

Beef kidney slices fried and served with a gravy of butter, flour, water, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and shallot vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Dredge the slices in flour.

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

  5. Remove from the pan and empty it.

Make the gravy

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

  2. Pour in boiling water and simmer for 1 minute.

  3. Add mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and shallot vinegar to taste.

  4. Optionally, add minced herbs and finely chopped onion.

Serve

  1. Serve the kidney with the gravy.

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. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 body of the dish, cooked through to a tender texture.
Flour
Coats the slices to brown in the pan and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Fats the pan and carries the flour, adding richness to the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.
Shallot vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and a mild shallot aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the slices. Kidney turns tough and rubbery if overcooked, so the slices should be fried briefly on both sides until just cooked through. Flour coating helps them brown and hold moisture.

“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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