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Calf's Kidney
The kidney of a calf may be made into balls, fried in hot butter or oil, and served with good brown gravy and toasted sippets. It must be cut into small pieces and made up with bread-crumbs, chopped onions, butter, salt, cayenne, and a beaten egg. Time to fry, ten minutes. The kidney is usually sold with the loin. Probable cost of kidneys, sufficient for two or three persons, 6d. or 8d.
A short Victorian formula for veal kidney rissoles, written in the compressed style of a reference dictionary rather than a step-by-step recipe. The proportions are left to the cook, so a little judgement is needed before you start.
- The hinge: do not overcookKidney turns grainy and hard the moment it is cooked past medium. The stated ten minutes works only for small balls in properly hot fat; if you make them larger, fry until the outside is browned and the centre is just set, not longer.
- Trimming the kidneyVeal kidney comes encased in firm white suet. Peel that away, split the kidney, and cut out the pale gristly core and any tubes at the centre. A soak of 20-30 minutes in cold water or milk mellows the smell.
- Proportions for the mixtureNone are given. For roughly 1 lb of trimmed kidney, allow about 1 cup fresh breadcrumbs, 1 small onion finely chopped and softened in butter, 1 oz butter, 1 beaten egg, salt, and cayenne on the point of a knife. Add more crumbs only until the mixture holds a ball.
- CayenneCayenne here is best read as a background heat rather than as chilli seasoning. An eighth of a teaspoon for a pound of mixture is in keeping with the recipe's brief mention.
- SippetsSmall triangles or dice of bread, toasted or fried in butter, set around the dish. They are there to soak up the gravy; toast cut into neat points does the same job.
- "Good brown gravy"In cookery of this period the phrase generally implies a stock-based sauce built on browned flour and butter rather than pan drippings alone. A well-reduced beef or veal stock thickened with a brown roux would suit.
- Oil or butterButter alone browns fast at frying heat. A mix of butter and a neutral oil gives the flavour without the scorching, and the balls need a pan hot enough to crust them quickly.
- Buying and yieldKidney "sold with the loin" reflects a butchering practice now uncommon; ask for veal kidney specifically, or substitute lamb kidneys, which are smaller and stronger in flavour. The recipe puts the probable cost at 6d. or 8d. for enough to serve two or three.
Calf's kidney is treated here as a matter of thrift and completeness rather than luxury: the loin of veal was a costly cut, and the kidney bedded in its suet came attached to it, as the entry itself notes. Binding chopped organ meat with breadcrumbs, onion and egg into fried balls belongs to the same family as rissoles, croquettes and forcemeat balls in nineteenth-century English cookery, in which a small quantity of strong-tasting meat was stretched with bread and served with a brown sauce. In French kitchens rognon de veau is classically roasted whole in its fat. The pricing in pence, offered as "probable cost," is a recurring feature of the book and suggests it was meant for households budgeting their marketing.