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Kidneys and Bacon
Trim away the fat from the desired number of kidneys, skin, and cut each into slices cross-wise. Mix on a plate a table-spoonful of flour, a salt-spoonful of salt, and half a salt-spoonful of pepper. Dip each slice into the mixture. Melt a little bacon fat or butter in the fryingpan; then put in the required number of rashers of bacon, cut thinly, and fry very gently over a slow fire, turning them repeatedly. When sufficiently cooked put them on the dish on which they are to be served, and fry the slices of kidney in the same fat. Turn them every minute, and in about five minutes they will be done enough, and may be put on the dish with the bacon. Pour off the superabundant fat; sprinkle a tea-spoonful of flour into the remainder, and mix it thoroughly; add gradually as much water as will make a somewhat thick sauce. Stir it over the fire till it boils, add a tea-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, and strain over the kidneys.
A Victorian breakfast dish that hinges entirely on heat control: the bacon goes slowly, the kidneys go fast. Everything else is a two-minute pan sauce.
- Which kidneysUnspecified here; a breakfast dish of this kind in a British book of the period most often used lamb's or sheep's kidneys — about 2 per person, split or sliced crosswise. Ox kidney is coarser and needs longer, slower cooking than the five minutes given.
- TrimmingPeel off the thin outer membrane or the slices will curl and toughen in the pan, and cut out the pale gristly core at the hinge. A quick rinse and pat dry is enough; the long soaking in salted water some older books call for is unnecessary with fresh kidneys.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon holds roughly a quarter teaspoon, so the seasoned flour is about 1 tablespoon flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper.
- "A slow fire"Medium-low. The bacon is rendering fat that the kidneys will cook in, so it wants to be turned repeatedly and taken out just short of crisp rather than browned hard.
- Five minutes is the ceilingKidney goes grainy and ammoniac the moment it passes the pink stage. Fry the slices over a brisker heat than the bacon, turn once a minute, and pull them while the centres are still rosy — carryover heat on the warm dish finishes them.
- The sauceThe recipe thickens plain water; a spoonful of stock, or stock with a splash of sherry or Madeira, gives a gravy worth straining. Scrape the fond off the pan bottom as you whisk it in.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup but a thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquor, still sold by a few British makers. Failing that, a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce or a dash of soy plus a little dried mushroom powder stands in for the same savoury note.
- ServingA breakfast or supper dish for as many as you have kidneys for, on hot plates with dry toast or fried bread to catch the sauce. It does not hold — cook it to order.
Kidneys and bacon belongs to the long British breakfast tradition of devilled and fried offal that filled the sideboard chafing dishes of the nineteenth-century middle class, alongside kedgeree, grilled bones and potted meats. Lamb's kidneys were cheap and cooked in minutes, which suited a meal served early and often to people leaving the house. The mushroom ketchup at the end is the period's workhorse seasoning — a salted, spiced mushroom liquor that was well established in English cookery by the early eighteenth century, roughly a century before tomato ketchup appears in English-language books, and was the standard way to put depth into a pan gravy made with nothing but flour and water.