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Stewed Kidneys
Soak the kidneys for several hours, put them on to boil until tender. Roll them in flour, add a lump of butter the size of an egg, two spoonfuls catsup-any kind will answer, though walnut is the best; pepper and salt to the taste. Stew them until well seasoned.--Mrs. P.W.
A plain nineteenth-century offal stew that assumes you know what kidneys smell like before they are soaked. The recipe gives no quantities for the kidneys themselves and no liquid measure, so treat it as a method rather than a formula.
- The soak is the hingeKidneys hold urine in their tubules and turn acrid if cooked straight from the butcher. Several hours in cold water, changed two or three times (or in lightly salted water or milk), is what makes the dish edible; skipping it cannot be fixed later with seasoning.
- Which kidneysMrs. P.W. does not say. Veal, lamb and beef kidneys were all sold in the period, and the recipe gives nothing to choose between them. Lamb kidneys are the easiest to find now; about 2 lb of trimmed kidneys will serve four. Split them, cut out the white core and any fat before soaking.
- Timings modern practice has overturned"Boil until tender" suits tough beef kidney, which wants an hour or more of gentle simmering. Lamb and veal kidney are tender in a few minutes and go grainy and rubbery if boiled hard; poach them gently and briefly, then finish in the stew.
- A lump of butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. That is generous but correct here, since the flour needs fat to cook into a sauce rather than sitting raw on the meat.
- Two spoonfuls catsupRead as tablespoons, though the original does not specify. Nineteenth-century catsup meant a thin, dark, salty savoury sauce, not the sweet tomato kind — walnut catsup was green walnuts salted and steeped with vinegar, salt and spice. Mushroom catsup or a good Worcestershire is the nearest thing on a modern shelf; tomato ketchup will make the dish sweet.
- LiquidNone is specified. The boiling water is the obvious source: keep a cup or so of it and add it to the floured kidneys and butter to make the gravy, loosening as it thickens.
- ServingThis was breakfast or supper food, spooned over toast, hominy or rice. A squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of dry sherry at the end lifts it, and does no violence to the period.
Kidney cookery survived in American household books long after other organ meats faded. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives, is full of these initialled, half-measured entries — recipes written by cooks for cooks who already knew the basics and needed only the seasoning reminded to them; the unattributed page here is identified as belonging to that book on the editor's judgement. The walnut catsup called for here is the older sense of the word: before tomato ketchup became dominant in the late nineteenth century, "catsup" covered a family of pungent bottled sauces made from mushrooms, oysters, or unripe walnuts, kept in the larder as a year-round source of savour. That the recipe shrugs and says "any kind will answer" suggests the bottle in question was whatever the household happened to have put up that season.