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Kidney Soup

A hearty soup made with ox kidney, beef shin, onions, parsley, butter, flour, and stock, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the meat and kidney into very small pieces.

  2. Melt the butter or fat in a stewpan and fry the meat, kidney, parsley, and onion until brown.

Simmer

  1. Add the stock or water, salt, and pepper; bring to a boil, skim well, then cover and simmer gently for about 4 hours.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup; pound the meat if convenient, or rub as much as possible through a wire sieve.

  2. Return the soup to the saucepan, and when boiling, add the purée of meat and the flour mixed smoothly with a little water; simmer for a few minutes and serve.

  3. Garnish with small pieces of cooked carrot, turnip, or kidney if desired.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Breaks down during long simmering to give the soup body and rich meaty flavour.
Ox kidney
Adds a deep, rich meaty flavour and some body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the strained soup so it becomes smoothly viscous.
Butter or good fat
Carries browning of the meat and kidney, building savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the meat and kidney until brown. Browning through the Maillard reaction develops deep savoury flavour that the long simmer alone cannot create, so the meat should be well coloured before liquid is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, parsley, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, parsley, pepper. 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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