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Kidney Soup

A soup made with kidney, stock, mushroom catsup, Harvey sauce, butter, rice flour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kidney

  1. Wash the kidney and season with pepper.

  2. Roll the kidney in rice flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and brown the kidney quickly.

  2. Add part of the stock and bring to a boil, cooking for a few minutes.

  3. Transfer to a saucepan with the remaining stock and let it simmer 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. Mushroom + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the soup.
Rice flour
Coats the kidney so it browns and helps thicken the stock.
Butter
Carries heat for browning the kidney and adds richness.
Second stock
Forms the liquid base that the kidney gently cooks in.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savory, umami depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the floured kidney. Brown it quickly over steady heat so the flour forms a golden crust and the surface seals. Overcrowding or low heat steams the kidney instead, leaving it pale and less flavourful.

“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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