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Pig's Kidneys
Pig's kidneys may be broiled, fried, or stewed, in the same way as mutton kidneys. The skirts may be cooked with the kidneys. Cut them, lengthwise, into slices a quarter of an inch thick, season with salt and cayenne, and sprinkle over them a dessert-spoonful of finely-powdered herbs, of which two-thirds should be parsley, and one-third chives. Fry them for five or six minutes in two ounces of hot butter, and when nicely browned, stir a dessert-spoonful of flour in amongst them, and add, very gradually, a quarter of a pint of good gravy, and a table-spoonful of ketchup. When on the point of boiling, take out the meat, put it on a hot dish, let the sauce remain on the fire for one minute, and pour it boiling over the kidneys. Garnish with toasted sippets. A glassful of light wine may be added to the sauce. Time, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A straightforward Victorian offal fry, with the sauce built in the pan. The main work is in the trimming, which the original assumes you already know how to do.
- Prepare the kidneys firstPig's kidneys need the outer membrane peeled off and the white core cut out with scissors or a small knife before slicing. Many cooks then soak the slices in milk or lightly salted water for 20-30 minutes and pat dry, which tempers the ammoniac edge; drying matters, as wet kidney steams rather than browns.
- "The skirts"This is the diaphragm muscle, traditionally sold attached to or alongside the kidney. Butchers rarely present it that way now, so ask, or simply make the dish with kidney alone.
- Dessert-spoonfulTwo teaspoons. So roughly two teaspoons of chopped herbs, two teaspoons of flour.
- A quarter of a pintFive imperial fluid ounces, a scant two-thirds of a US cup. Two ounces of butter is four tablespoons, which is generous for a two-person dish; three will do.
- KetchupIn a Victorian English kitchen this means mushroom or walnut ketchup, a thin, dark, salty, distinctly savoury condiment, not the sweet tomato sauce. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce plus a little soy gives a comparable effect.
- Don't let the sauce boil with the meat in itThe instruction to lift the kidney out the moment the pan approaches a boil is the hinge of the recipe. Kidney tightens and turns rubbery within a minute of hard cooking; five or six minutes at a brisk fry is the target, and the sauce finishes without it.
- Good gravyThe book means proper meat stock or leftover roast gravy, not a thickened commercial sauce. A well-reduced beef or veal stock is the closest equivalent; a thin stock will leave the sauce watery even with the flour.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread, toasted or fried in butter, tucked around the edge of the dish to soak up the sauce.
- YieldAs stated, two or three; figure on one whole pig's kidney per person, and serve it the minute the sauce goes over, since it will not hold.
Cassell's ran on the logic of the Victorian household budget, which is why almost every entry ends with a probable cost and a note of how many it feeds: at a shilling for two or three people, kidneys were an economical hot dish, and offal of every kind occupies far more space in these books than it does in modern ones. The construction here, brown the meat, dust with flour, moisten with stock and a spoonful of ketchup, is the standard British small-fry sauce of the period, and the ketchup is the tell: mushroom and walnut ketchups were the household bottle of concentrated savour before commercial tomato sauce and beef extracts displaced them. Parsley and chives in two-to-one proportion, with the exact spoon measure specified, reflect the dictionary's ambition to be a reference book rather than a collection of hints, and the cross-reference at the head, treating pig's kidneys as a variation on mutton kidneys, is how the whole volume is organised.