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Stuffed Kidneys

A dish of kidneys filled with a breadcrumb and salt pork mixture, broiled and served with sauce piquante.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the kidneys lengthwise, leaving enough meat and skin on one side to serve as a hinge.

  2. Rub the inside with melted butter.

  3. Broil the kidneys, back downward, over a bright fire for 8 minutes.

Make and fill

  1. Prepare the stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, cooked salt pork, parsley, and butter in a double boiler.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper, salt, and onion juice, then stir in the lemon juice.

  3. Fill the kidneys with the stuffing and secure the edges with a toothpick.

  4. Pepper the stuffed kidneys and serve with sauce piquante.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Kidneys
Form the main body of the dish, which is split and stuffed.
Bread crumbs
Bind the stuffing and absorb the butter and juices for a soft filling.
Salt pork
Adds savory, fatty richness to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and coats the kidneys for browning.

The step that matters

Broil the kidneys back downward over a bright fire. Searing the cut surface quickly over high heat browns it and sets the outer surface while the interior stays tender. Overcooking under strong heat toughens kidney meat, so timing matters.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, pork, parsley, pepper, lemon):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, pork, parsley, pepper, lemon. 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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