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Kidney Stew

A stew made with sliced kidney, flour, salt, pepper, stock, mushroom ketchup, and butter or bacon fat, cooked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Kidney Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Wash the kidney and remove the core.

  2. Cut it into thin slices.

  3. Mix together the pepper, salt, and flour.

  4. Roll the kidney slices in this mixture.

Cook

  1. Brown the kidney quickly in the butter or bacon fat.

  2. Add the stock or water, skim well, and cook very 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Kidney
Forms the main body of the stew and provides its rich, meaty flavour and texture.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown and thicken the cooking liquid into a light gravy.
Butter or bacon fat
Carries heat for browning the kidney and adds richness to the stew.
Stock or water
Forms the liquid in which the kidney cooks slowly until tender.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the stew's cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Brown the kidney quickly in the butter or bacon fat. Hot fat browns the floured surface quickly, building flavour through the Maillard reaction. Overcrowding or lingering over the heat can steam the slices and leave them grey and dull.

“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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