Home › The Principles of Cookery › Bullock's Kidney, Stewed
Bullock's Kidney, Stewed
Fry the slices of a kidney in butter until they become a light brown. Sprinkle them with pepper and salt. Make a gravy with the butter, a little flour, and warm water; then put the slices into the stewpan with the gravy, and stew over a slow fire until quite tender. A little mushroom ketchup may be added. Time, a little more than an hour. Cost of kidney, 10d. per pound. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A plain braise of beef kidney that depends entirely on long, gentle cooking; the frying stage is for colour only.
- Bullock's kidney is beef kidneyA bullock is a castrated male bovine, usually young, so this is the multi-lobed beef kidney sold at butchers, not the small pair-shaped lamb kidneys. One typically weighs somewhere between about 1 and 2 lb and is much stronger in flavour and coarser in texture than lamb or veal kidney.
- Trim and soak firstThe recipe assumes a butcher has done the work. Cut away the hard white core and any fat, slice about half an inch thick, and soak an hour in cold water or milk to draw out the ammoniacal edge; drain and pat very dry or the slices will steam rather than brown.
- Don't overshoot the browningKidney seizes and turns rubbery fast over high heat. Take it only to light brown, as written, and get it into the liquid; the hour of slow stewing is what makes it tender, not the frying.
- The gravy is a roux in the panThe recipe says only 'a little flour' and warm water; in practice roughly equal weights of butter and flour, cooked briefly, then let down with enough warm water (or beef stock, if you prefer) to cover the slices. Add the liquid gradually to avoid lumps.
- "Slow fire" means a bare simmerOn a modern hob that is the lowest setting with the lid on. A rolling boil tightens the kidney and it is slow to recover, if it recovers at all.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom infusion, not the tomato condiment. Still sold by some specialist grocers; a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce or dark soy plus a little anchovy gives a comparable savoury lift. Add it near the end and taste before salting further.
- Time and yieldReckon 1 to 1.5 hours, checking with a knife point rather than the clock. It serves two or three, and wants mashed potato, rice or plain toast to take up the gravy.
The recipe prices the kidney at tenpence a pound, putting it at the cheaper end of the Victorian butcher's counter: beef kidney was too coarse for the roast-and-entree end of the table but well suited to long stewing. The same cut carried far more famous dishes, above all steak and kidney pudding and pie, where its flavour was valued for the gravy it produced. The mushroom ketchup here is a period marker in its own right; before commercial tomato ketchup and bottled brown sauces became household staples, a bottle of dark mushroom liquor served as an all-purpose depth-giver, and it appears often in Victorian cookery books in exactly this position, stirred into a flour-and-butter gravy.