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Sheep's Kidneys, with Champagne
Take six or twelve kidneys, according to the quantity that you wish to cook; remove the skins, and slice the kidneys the thickness and size of a halfpenny; have a little piece of lean bacon cut into small squares; fry these in an omeletpan with a very small quantity of butter; when the bacon is of a good colour, put in the kidneys, taking care to move the pan frequently to fry them equally; when they are done, strew over them a little salt and pepper, some parsley chopped very fine, a very small piece of shallot, well chopped also, and dredge over all a little flour; stir up with a wooden spoon, then moisten with a glassful of white champagne or chablis (neither Madeira nor sherry), which should be very hot, but do not let it boil, otherwise the kidneys will not be eatable; add a little lemon and a little cayenne, and observe that such dishes should be well seasoned. Serve the kidneys first, in a dish with a hollow spoon, and let the sauce have one boil to cook the flour; mind that the sauce be judiciously thick to add to the meat, but not too thick.
A fast sauté that lives or dies on heat control: the wine is added hot but never allowed to boil with the kidneys in the pan, because boiling turns lamb kidney grey and rubbery within seconds. Read the last two sentences first — the kidneys come out of the pan before the sauce is finished.
- The hinge: never boil the kidneysLamb kidney is cooked through in two to three minutes of brisk frying and toughens almost immediately after. The wine goes in hot so the pan temperature does not crash, the kidneys are lifted out, and only then does the sauce get its single boil to cook out the raw flour.
- "Sheep's kidneys"These are what a butcher now sells as lamb kidneys — small, dark, about 2 oz each. Six to twelve is a sensible spread: six will serve two as a savoury or breakfast dish, twelve will serve four. Peel the membrane and snip out the white core and any gristle at the hinge before slicing.
- "The thickness and size of a halfpenny"The Victorian halfpenny was roughly an inch across and thin. In practice: slice each kidney crosswise into rounds about 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick, or halve it lengthwise and cut thin slices. Thin and even matters more than the exact figure.
- Omelet-panA shallow, sloping-sided frying pan, 8-10 inches, not a deep casserole. Anything that lets the slices sit in one layer over high heat will do; crowding steams them and they will not brown.
- "A glassful"Period equivalents for a glassful vary; reckon it as a small wine glass, somewhere between about 2 and 5 fl oz (60-150 ml). Chablis or any dry, unoaked white works; the instruction to avoid Madeira and sherry keeps the sauce sharp rather than sweet and nutty.
- Lean baconCut from a thick slice or from unsmoked streaky, diced small; avoid maple-cured or heavily smoked rashers, which will dominate the wine.
- Dredging the flourAbout a teaspoon over the whole pan is enough. It is there to bind the pan juices and wine into a light sauce, not to make gravy; the recipe's warning about "judiciously thick" means coating consistency.
- "A little lemon"A squeeze of juice, added off the heat at the end with the cayenne. Season firmly — offal and a dry white both need more salt and pepper than the quantities suggest at first taste.
Kidneys were breakfast and supper food in the Victorian middle-class household — grilled, devilled, or, as here, fried quickly and sauced in the French manner, which is why Cassell's specifies an omelet-pan and a chopped shallot. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in the 1870s and reissued for decades afterwards, sat between those two traditions and drew heavily on French professional practice. The insistence on champagne or Chablis and the flat refusal of Madeira or sherry marks the dish as belonging to the fashionable side of that inheritance: fortified wine was common enough in the English kitchen for a meat sauce, and rejecting it is a small statement of allegiance. The warning that the wine must be hot but must not boil is the genuinely professional note here, and it is the one instruction most often ignored.