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Kidneys Grilled
Prepare them as for stewing, cut each kidney in half and dip them in egg beaten up with salt and pepper; bread-crumb them, dip them in melted butter, bread-crumb them again, then grill before a slow fire; serve with Worcestershire or some other sauce.--Mrs. K.
A short Victorian breakfast dish that depends almost entirely on heat and timing. The recipe assumes you already know the preliminary work, which is where most of the flavor is won or lost.
- "Prepare them as for stewing"Peel off the thin outer membrane, split or halve, and snip out the white core and any fat at the hinge. Soak the trimmed kidneys 30 minutes in cold salted water or milk, then pat dry; this pulls out the ammoniac tang that puts people off offal.
- Which kidneysLamb kidneys are the sensible choice: small, mild, and quick. Veal is milder still but larger and now expensive. Beef kidney is too coarse and too strong for this treatment and wants long stewing instead.
- The hinge of the dishKidneys toughen fast once they are past done. Over high heat halved lamb kidneys take roughly 2 to 3 minutes a side and are usually served still pink in the centre; before the slow fire this recipe specifies, and under a double coat of crumbs, they will need noticeably longer. Cooked grey through they are a lost cause.
- "Grill before a slow fire"This means propped facing an open hearth, not laid over coals. The modern equivalent is a broiler at moderate heat with the pan set 5 to 6 inches down, or a heavy ribbed pan over medium-high, so the crumbs color while the interior is barely done.
- The double crumbingEgg, crumbs, melted butter, crumbs again gives a thicker shell that also shields the meat from the fire. Dry fine crumbs are the usual choice and are less inclined to scorch than fresh. Chilling the coated kidneys 15 minutes helps the crust hold.
- SauceThe recipe names Worcestershire from the bottle, or "some other sauce"; a spoonful whisked into the butter you have left over, with a little mustard, makes a better dressing. Mushroom ketchup and devil sauces were also in use at the period.
- YieldThe original gives none. Count two lamb kidneys per person as a first course or breakfast dish, one veal kidney for two.
Grilled and devilled kidneys belonged to the nineteenth-century breakfast and supper table on both sides of the Atlantic, part of the same family of quickly broiled savories as kidneys on toast, devilled bones and grilled herring. Cooking "before" rather than "over" the fire was standard hearth practice: the meat hung or stood facing the coals on a stand or in a tin reflector, catching radiant heat while drippings were saved below. The Worcestershire sauce called for here was a commercial bottled condiment, generally traced to the Worcester firm of Lea and Perrins in the 1830s, and by the time Housekeeping in Old Virginia was compiled in 1878 it was common enough in American pantries that Mrs. K. could name it without explanation. Her recipe's brevity is typical of the book, which gathered contributions from Virginia housekeepers who assumed a reader already knew how to dress a kidney and manage a fire.