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Kidneys, Fried
Skin four sheep's kidneys, and cut them into halves without quite dividing them. Put an ounce of butter in a clean frying-pan, and when it is melted put the kidneys in cut side downwards, and fry them for three or four minutes, then turn them, and fry for another three minutes. Put each kidney on a small piece of toast, season with pepper and salt, pour the gravy from the frying-pan over them, and serve very hot.
A straightforward breakfast dish that survives largely unchanged; the only real variables are the size of the kidneys and how far you cook them.
- Skinning and coringThe recipe says skin but not core. Peel off the thin membrane, then snip out the white fatty gristle at the hinge with scissors, or the kidney will curl and toughen around it.
- Butterflying"Cut them into halves without quite dividing them" means splitting lengthwise through the curve and opening the kidney flat like a book. Some cooks run a skewer crosswise through the two halves to hold them open in the pan.
- SoakingSheep's kidneys are milder than ox but still assertive. A half-hour soak in cold water or milk, then a thorough pat dry, softens the flavour; the drying matters, since wet kidneys will steam rather than brown.
- Heat and timingSix to seven minutes total is right for kidneys of about 2 oz each, over a brisk heat. They should be pink and yielding at the centre; taken past that they turn grainy and rubbery, and no amount of gravy rescues them.
- The pan gravyThere is no thickening here. The "gravy" is butter and the juices the kidneys throw out, which is why the toast underneath is structural rather than decorative. A spoonful of stock or sherry swirled in the hot pan will stretch it.
- Butter alone burnsAn ounce of butter at frying heat will brown fast. Add a little neutral oil, or use clarified butter, if your pan runs hot.
- YieldFour kidneys, eight halves, serves two as a breakfast or savoury course.
Fried or grilled kidneys belonged to the British hot breakfast sideboard of the nineteenth century, alongside devilled bones, kedgeree and bacon, and they lingered as a savoury at the close of dinner long after the breakfast habit faded. Sheep's kidneys were cheap and often sold whole in their suet, and the enclosing fat was rendered separately for pastry and puddings. The toast is the period's usual answer to a juicy meat with no thickened sauce, and it does the same work here as it does under game birds or mushrooms.