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Bullock's Kidney, Fried
Cut up a bullock's kidney into very thin slices, dust plentifully with flour, and season with pepper and salt. Place an ounce of butter into a saucepan; as soon as it begins to melt, put the sliced and seasoned kidney to it; add a little cold water, just enough to prevent burning, or, if to be had, use cider instead. Add a table-spoonful of ketchup. Keep shaking and stirring over a gentle fire, but do not let it come to a boil; if it does, the kidney will be hard and tasteless. The secret of success consists in not letting it cook too much, too fast, or too long. Lay bits of toasted bread round the edge of a dish; with a spoon put the kidney in the middle, give the gravy a boil up, and pour over it. Some cooks garnish with sliced lemon, and stew in port or white wine; for the latter, the cider is not a bad substitute, and is more easily obtained.
A quick offal sauté that lives or dies on heat control. Everything here follows from the one rule the original states twice: it must never boil.
- Never let it boilKidney is dense muscle laced with connective tissue, and its proteins seize and squeeze out moisture the moment they pass a hard simmer. Keep the pan at a bare shiver, and take the slices out while they are still pink at the centre; they will finish in the residual heat.
- Bullock's kidney is beef kidneyA whole ox kidney is a multi-lobed piece weighing roughly 1 to 2 lb, far larger and stronger-tasting than lamb's. Butchers will generally supply it on request; it is the same cut that goes into steak and kidney pudding.
- Trim before you sliceThe recipe assumes a cook who has already dealt with the hard white core and the surrounding fat and membrane. Cut the lobes away from the central gristle and discard it, then slice as thinly as you can -- the recipe asks for 'very thin slices'.
- Soaking, optional but usualSoaking, optional -- Period cookery books often direct that beef kidney be soaked in salted water or milk and drained before cooking, to soften the ammoniacal edge. This recipe says nothing about it; if the smell of raw kidney bothers you, do it.
- Ketchup means mushroom or walnut ketchupIn an English book of this date, unqualified "ketchup" is the dark, thin, salty mushroom or walnut sauce, not tomato. Mushroom ketchup is still made; a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce gives a comparable savoury depth if you cannot find it.
- Cider means dry hard ciderCider means fermented hard cider -- British cider of the period was alcoholic rather than sweet apple juice. Use a dry cider, not sweet American apple cider, or the gravy turns cloying against the iron flavour of the kidney.
- An ounce of butterTwo tablespoons, for a whole kidney. It is barely enough to coat the pan, which is intentional: the floured slices and the splash of liquid do the work of making the gravy.
- Yield and serviceOne ox kidney serves three or four as a breakfast or supper dish. The toast round the edge is not garnish but the starch component, so cut it thick enough to hold up under the gravy.
Fried kidney on toast belongs to the Victorian and Edwardian breakfast sideboard, where devilled kidneys, kedgeree and bacon sat in covered dishes for a household that came down at staggered hours. Ox kidney was among the cheaper offals, larger and less costly than lamb's kidneys, which may explain why the recipe takes trouble to explain how to keep a tough cut tender rather than simply telling the cook to grill it. The use of ketchup and a wine or cider liquid reflects a common nineteenth-century English approach to strong-flavoured meat, where acid and a fermented savoury sauce were used to cut the metallic taste of organ meat. The instruction that the secret 'consists in not letting it cook too much, too fast, or too long' is unusually candid for a book that often assumes the reader already knows.