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Sheep’s Kidneys Stewed in Port Wine

Kidneys stewed with port wine, butter, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sheep’s Kidneys Stewed in Port Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim off the pith and skin from each kidney and cut them into pieces.

  2. Season the kidneys with white pepper, cayenne, coarse sea salt, parsley, and shallot.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until it begins to dissolve.

  2. Add the kidneys and shake the pan to brown them slightly.

  3. Pour in the stock, jelly, and port wine, then cover the pan with a lid.

  4. Simmer gently for twenty minutes without removing the lid.

  5. Serve immediately on a hot dish.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Kidneys
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender when simmered gently in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps brown the kidneys in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce as it simmers.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce as it reduces.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that cooks the kidneys and carries the flavour.
Jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce, giving it a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the lid on. Keeping the heat low and the lid on holds the liquid steady, so the kidneys cook through and turn tender without toughening. Boiling hard or lifting the lid lets the liquid evaporate and the meat dry out and firm up.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, shallot, butter, flour, port wine):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, shallot, butter, flour, port wine. 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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