Home › The Principles of Cookery › MUTTON KIDNEYS (a la Maitre d'Hotel)
MUTTON KIDNEYS (a la Maitre d'Hotel)
Broil three or four sheep's kidneys (see MUTTON KIDNEYS, BROILED), lay them with the rounded side downwards, and put about one ounce of maitre d'hotel butter, prepared as follows, upon each one. Put four ounces of fresh butter into an earthenware basin, add a little salt and cayenne, a table-spoonful of finely-minced parsley, and a dessert-spoonful of strained lemon-juice; work these ingredients well together with the point of a knife, in a cool place. When thoroughly mixed, divide the butter into equal parts, put a piece upon each kidney, and serve. Time, about six minutes to broil the kidneys. Probable cost, 4d. each. (See also BUTTER, A LA MAITRE D'HOTEL.)
A Victorian breakfast or savoury dish that comes together in under ten minutes once the butter is made. Almost everything depends on not overcooking the kidneys.
- The hinge: brief, fierce heatLamb kidneys go grey and rubbery within a minute of being cooked through. Six minutes total under a very hot grill or on a ridged pan is right for kidneys split and opened flat; the centre should still be faintly pink and yielding.
- "Broil" means grillIn an English book of this period broiling is direct radiant heat — a gridiron over coals, or the grill in a modern oven set to its highest setting with the shelf close to the element. It is not the American oven-broil-from-a-distance treatment, and it is certainly not baking.
- Preparing the kidneysSheep's (lamb's) kidneys need the thin outer membrane peeled away and the white core snipped out with scissors. Split them almost through lengthways and open them flat, then run a skewer crossways through each to hold them open on the grill.
- Rounded side downwardsThey are served cut-side up because the cup that forms holds the melting butter and the juices. Skipping this detail loses the sauce onto the plate.
- Dessert-spoonfulA dessert spoon is two teaspoons, so roughly 10 ml of lemon juice to four ounces (115 g) of butter. A tablespoon of parsley here is the old imperial tablespoon, near enough to a modern one.
- You will have butter left overFour ounces divides into about four one-ounce portions. The recipe says to divide the butter into equal parts between the kidneys, so with three you simply get a larger piece on each rather than a surplus. If you do have butter left over, roll it in greaseproof paper into a cylinder, chill, and slice off coins as needed; it will keep several days refrigerated and freezes well.
- "Fresh butter"Means unsalted; the recipe then adds salt separately so you control the seasoning. Work it soft but cool — if it melts and separates the parsley sinks and the lemon juice will not emulsify back in.
- Yield and servingThree or four kidneys serve two as a savoury or a light course, one or two as a main breakfast plate. The recipe says nothing about an accompaniment, though grilled kidneys were commonly served on hot buttered toast, which catches what runs off.
- Probable costFourpence each at the time the book was published. Lamb kidneys remain among the cheaper things at a butcher, though they are often not on display and may need to be asked for.
Maître d'hôtel butter — softened butter worked with parsley, lemon and seasoning — is the plainest of the French compound butters, and by the middle of the nineteenth century it had become thoroughly domesticated in English cookery, appearing on grilled steaks, fried fish, boiled potatoes and, as here, on kidneys. The name attaches the preparation to the maître d'hôtel, the head of the household staff, though quite why it came to be so called is not documented. Grilled kidneys themselves belong to the peculiarly British institution of the hot breakfast sideboard and the late-Victorian savoury, the small hot dish served at the end of dinner; devilled kidneys, kidneys on toast and this buttered version all sit in the same tradition. Cassell's cross-references — to the broiling method and to the butter under its own heading — show how the Dictionary of Cookery was built: an alphabetical reference work rather than a book to read through, assuming a cook who already knew how to handle a gridiron and only needed reminding of the proportions.