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Veal Kidney, Broiled
Skin the kidney and cut it in halves lengthwise. Flatten these, season with salt and cayenne, dip them in clarified butter, and bread-crumb them. Broil over a clear fire, and serve on a hot dish with a small piece of maitre d'hotel butter under them. This butter may be made as follows. Pick and wash half an ounce of parsley. Chop it small, then put it in the corner of a napkin, dip it in cold water, and wring it dry. Put it in a basin with a little pepper and salt, three ounces of butter, and a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice. Beat it with a wooden spoon or a knife till it looks like cream, when it will be ready for use. If it is placed too near the fire so as to melt the butter the preparation will be spoilt. Time to broil the kidney, eight minutes--i.e. four minutes to each side.
A straightforward grill that depends almost entirely on not overcooking the kidney and on keeping the compound butter cold. Both halves of the recipe are quick; the butter can be made days ahead.
- The hinge: don't overshootVeal kidney is tender and mild but toughens and coarsens if taken much past medium. Eight minutes total over a hot grill or ridged pan suits a split kidney of moderate size; modern practice leaves the centre faintly rosy. Press-test rather than clock-watch if the kidney is smaller.
- TrimmingBeyond skinning, cut out the pale fatty core at the hinge of each half with the point of a knife. Left in, it is chewy and carries most of the sharp flavour people object to. Some cooks soak the halves in milk or lightly salted water for half an hour first.
- "Flatten these"A firm press with the flat of a knife or the heel of your hand, not pounding. The point is even thickness so the crumb browns while the interior is still pink; skewering each half flat keeps it from curling on the heat.
- Clarified butter and crumbsClarified butter is butter melted and the milk solids left behind, so it will not scorch or blacken the crumbs over a live fire. Use dry fine breadcrumbs; fresh soft crumbs go soggy in the butter and slump off.
- "A clear fire"Charcoal burned down past the flames to steady, ashed-over heat. A gas grill on high or a heavy ridged pan over medium-high does the same work. Flames licking the crumbs will taste of soot.
- Ma fitre d'h fotel butter, in modern measuresHalf an ounce of parsley is a generous handful of leaves, about 3-4 tablespoons chopped; 3 oz butter is 6 tablespoons; a dessertspoonful of lemon juice is about 2 teaspoons. Wringing the chopped parsley dry in a cloth keeps the butter from going watery and streaked.
- Keeping the butter workableThe warning against the fire is the real instruction: once melted it separates and is hard to bring back to a cream. Beat it at cool room temperature, then roll it in parchment and chill; slice coins off as needed.
- YieldOne veal kidney serves one as a main course or two as a savoury or first course. The butter makes far more than one kidney needs and keeps a week refrigerated, longer frozen.
Kidney was standard, unremarkable eating in the Victorian and Edwardian household, and veal kidney was the aristocrat of the group — milder and finer-grained than beef or mutton, and priced accordingly. Its appearance here as a broil dressed with maître d'hôtel butter places it among the grills and savouries that filled out breakfast and supper tables rather than the dinner roasts. The butter itself — parsley, lemon, seasoning, worked into softened butter — is one of the small workhorse preparations of the nineteenth-century professional kitchen, its name traditionally explained by the maître d'hôtel who would have finished such a dish at or near the table; French cookery books had codified it well before Cassell's, and it remains the default dressing for a plain grilled chop, steak or fish. Cassell's habit of tucking a sub-recipe inside the main one, as here, reflects a book meant to be used as a dictionary: the reader looks up the dish and is given everything needed on the spot.