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Kidney Toast
Pound in a mortar a cold veal kidney, with the fat which surrounds it. Season it with half a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, the finely-grated rind of a quarter of a lemon, and two or three grates of nutmeg. Mix it with the white of an egg, well whisked. Lay it upon pieces of toast cut into squares. Cover with the yolk of the egg, well beaten, and strew bread-crumbs over. Melt one ounce of butter in a dish, put in the toasts, and place them in a hot oven to bake. Serve as hot as possible. Time, a quarter of an hour to bake the toasts. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian savoury built on leftovers: cold cooked veal kidney pounded to a paste, spread on toast and baked. It reads oddly today only because the equipment and the assumptions have changed.
- "Cold veal kidney" means already cookedThe recipe takes for granted a kidney that has been cooked and left to go cold, most likely from a joint. Start from raw and fifteen minutes in the oven will not reliably cook a paste that thick; poach or roast the kidney through first, cool it, then pound.
- A hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "hot" in period usage is usually read as somewhere around 400-450F. The point is to set the egg glaze and colour the crumbs quickly without drying the toast to a plank.
- Mortar or food processorThe texture wanted is a smooth spreadable forcemeat, not a mince. A small processor gets there in seconds; pulse rather than run it, or the fat smears and the paste turns greasy.
- Kidney fatVeal or beef kidney suet is the surrounding fat, and it is what keeps the paste from going dry and grainy. If your kidney comes trimmed, add an ounce of shredded suet or a knob of butter to compensate.
- Egg, split two waysThe white is a binder worked into the paste; the yolk is the glaze spread over the top. The recipe asks for the white "well whisked", though a light whisking is enough to loosen it for mixing.
- Soaking and trimmingKidney carries a strong ammoniac note if the core is left in. Cut out the white gristle at the centre before cooking, and rinse well; the lemon rind and nutmeg in the seasoning are there to work against that same flavour.
- The toastCut thick and toast it dry and firm on both sides before it is spread, otherwise it collapses under the paste and the ounce of melted butter in the dish.
- Cost and yield8d is the 19th-century price for the whole dish, not a modern guide to anything. Three or four as a savoury course or a light supper, as the recipe states.
Kidney toast belongs to the British savoury, the small hot, salty course served after the sweet at a Victorian dinner and often carried into breakfast and supper as well. Its logic is thrift as much as taste: a roast loin of veal comes with the kidney embedded in its fat, and once the joint is cold the kidney is too good to throw out and too little to serve on its own. Pounding cold meat in a mortar with seasoning, binding it with egg and spreading it on toast is one of the standard moves of the period, the same technique that produces potted meats. The lemon rind and nutmeg are conventional partners for offal in English cookery of the time, and are usually understood as cutting richness rather than adding flavour of their own.