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Mutton Kidneys, Fried
Remove the outer skin from half a dozen sheep's kidneys, cut them in halves, and season them rather highly with salt and cayenne. Fry them in hot butter over a brisk fire; when nicely browned upon both sides, serve them immediately on a hot dish. A dozen pieces of the crumb of bread of the same size and shape may be fried in butter for two or three minutes, and each half kidney may be served upon one of these. When this is done, a cupful of good brown gravy should be put into the dish with the kidneys. Time, eight minutes to fry the kidneys. Probable cost, 4d. each. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian breakfast or savoury dish that survives almost unchanged in British cooking. The whole thing hinges on heat and restraint: kidneys want a hot pan and a short stay in it.
- Don't fry them eight minutesHalved lamb kidneys are cooked through in roughly three to four minutes total over a brisk fire, turning once. Eight minutes will leave them grey, firm and faintly ammoniac; pull them while the centres are still rosy and let them rest a moment on the hot dish.
- Mutton kidneys means lamb kidneys"Mutton" here indicates sheep rather than the meat of an older animal specifically. Buy lamb's kidneys, usually sold in pairs and often still in their jacket of suet; six kidneys is about 350-400 g.
- Trimming, which the recipe skipsAfter peeling off the outer membrane and halving lengthwise, snip out the white core and any tubes with scissors. Left in, the core stays chewy and carries most of the sharp flavour people object to.
- Season at the last momentSalt sitting on the cut surface will draw moisture and slow browning. Season the halves just as they go into the pan, and be honest about "rather highly" — an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne across six kidneys is plenty for most palates.
- Butter alone will burnThe pan needs to be hot enough to brown, which is hotter than butter alone tolerates. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, gives the same flavour without black specks.
- The fried croutesCut twelve pieces of crustless bread to match the size and shape of the kidney halves and fry them in butter until crisp, ideally before the kidneys so the pan carries the flavour forward. They exist to soak up the juices, so serve them dry and crisp rather than greasy.
- "Good brown gravy"In Victorian usage this generally means a separately made brown sauce or reduced meat stock rather than a quick pan gravy, though practice varied. A modern equivalent: deglaze the pan with a splash of sherry or Madeira and a cupful (call it 240 ml) of well-reduced beef stock, then whisk in a knob of butter. Pour it round the kidneys, not over the croutes.
- Yield and place in the mealSix kidneys serving five or six tells you this was a breakfast or supper savoury, one or two halves apiece alongside other dishes. As a main course it will feed two or three.
- The cost note"4d. each" is fourpence in pre-decimal currency, most likely per kidney, a reference point for a Victorian housekeeper pricing a menu and of no practical use now.
Kidneys on toast belong to the era of the large cooked breakfast and the late-Victorian "savoury" course, when offal was cheap and plentiful. The fried bread beneath is a form of the crouton or croûte, used in nineteenth-century English cookery as an edible plate for anything that released juices; it does the work that toast does in the familiar devilled kidneys of hotel breakfast menus. The cayenne points the same direction — kidneys were commonly given a peppery or mustardy lift, the kind of seasoning associated with the term "devilled".