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KIDNEYS, CURRIED (another way)
Split and grill nine sheep's kidneys until three parts cooked, then put them into half a pint of rich curry sauce (see CURRY SAUCE); add a table-spoonful of chutney, and simmer gently for eight minutes. Dish up in a border of rice.
A quick dish built on two things the Victorian kitchen always had to hand: a pan of made curry sauce and a grill already hot. The whole success of it rests on undercooking the kidneys before they go into the sauce.
- The hinge: stop grilling early"Three parts cooked" means the kidneys should still be rosy and yielding in the centre — two to three minutes a side under a hot grill or in a ridged pan. They finish in the sauce, and if they are cooked through before that they will be grainy and tough by the time the eight minutes are up.
- Half a pintCassell's is using the imperial pint of 20 fluid ounces, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. That is enough to coat nine kidneys generously without drowning them.
- Sheep's kidneysLamb kidneys are the modern equivalent and are sold in pairs at most butchers, roughly 2 oz each; nine is about 1 lb. Peel off the membrane, snip out the white core with scissors, then split them almost through and open them flat. Some cooks soak them 20 minutes in milk or lightly salted water to mute the ammoniac edge.
- SkeweringSplit kidneys curl under heat. Run a short skewer or two cocktail sticks through each one crosswise before grilling and they stay flat and cook evenly.
- Curry sauceThe cross-reference points to a separate recipe not reproduced here; period curry sauces of this kind were typically flour-thickened stock with curry powder and onion, sometimes apple. A modern made-from-scratch curry sauce works, but keep it on the loose side; it will thicken as it simmers and again as the kidneys release juices.
- ChutneyA tablespoon of chutney, mango being the usual modern choice, supplies the sweet-sour note. Chop any large fruit pieces first, and taste before adding salt.
- The simmerKeep it barely trembling, as the recipe directs. A brisk boil in eight minutes will firm the kidneys and may cause the fat to separate out of the sauce.
- Border of ricePress hot cooked long-grain rice into a lightly oiled ring mould or shape it into a ring on the platter with a spoon, then spoon the kidneys into the middle. About 1½ cups raw rice suits this quantity.
- YieldServes three as a main course, four or five as a savoury or breakfast dish, which is where a Victorian household would most likely have met it.
Curried kidneys belong to the Anglo-Indian repertoire that settled into the British breakfast and supper table through the nineteenth century, alongside kedgeree and devilled bones. Offal was cheap, sheep's kidneys came two to an animal and cooked in minutes, and a jar of curry powder plus a pot of yesterday's sauce turned them into something that felt considered rather than thrifty; Cassell's gives several versions of the dish rather than one. The "border of rice" was a common Victorian way of serving something in a sauce, a ring pressed from a mould. Kidneys grilled and then finished in a sauce are often associated with the club and chophouse kitchen, where a grill was always lit; the technique of half-grilling for flavour and finishing in liquid is the same logic behind a modern sear-and-braise.