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Kidney Soup

A soup made from sliced ox kidney simmered in stock with Hardy sauce, mushroom ketchup, butter, and rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Wash and dry the kidney, then cut it into thin slices.

  2. Mix the rice flour, pepper, and salt, then coat the kidney slices in the mixture.

Brown and simmer

  1. Brown the coated kidney slices quickly in the butter.

  2. Pour the stock over the browned kidney, and skim off any foam when boiling.

  3. Add the Hardy sauce and mushroom ketchup, then simmer slowly for two hours.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox kidney
Provides the main meat and body of the soup.
Rice flour
Coats the slices so they brown well and help thicken the broth.
Butter
Browns the coated kidney slices and adds richness.
Second stock or water
Forms the liquid base that the kidney simmers in.
Hardy sauce
Adds savory depth and a sharp, tangy flavour to the soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim the foam when the stock boils. Foam carries impurities and fine particles from the meat that would make the soup cloudy and give it an off taste. Removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-flavoured before the long simmer.

“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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