Kid
There are stories of kid being sold for houselamb. It is sad to think what the flesh of this little creature will grow to when it becomes a goat, or when old enough to be weaned. Too soon it turns to wickedness and folly. While it is still a suckling, however, it is very good, and may be roasted either as lamb or as hare clothed with bacon.
KIDNEYS nearly always mean sheep's kidneys or lamb's, and these alone are of much account.
Broiled. Skin them, split them, and fix them on skewers. Dip them in oil or in butter, sprinkle them with a little pepper and salt, and broil them first within and then without. They should be underdone; and when served a piece of maître d'hôtel butter should be placed in the hollow of each. It is essential that the cut surface of the kidney should be first presented to the fire. When it is afterwards turned away from the fire it forms a little cup with its own gravy in it.
Tossed. Split the kidneys, slice them, and toss them in two or three ounces of butter, with pepper and salt. Five minutes should be enough. Then shake a little flour over them, add a glass of sherry, another of good gravy, a shalot chopped fine, and mushrooms either whole, which is most pleasant (only in this case they have to be passed in butter beforehand), or sliced, which is least troublesome. Let them cook for ten minutes. Another way is to leave out the mushrooms and serve the kidneys with a border of mashed potatoes.
Kidney Pudding. -Line a basin with puff paste No. 4. Cut up some kidneys and put them into it with steak, pepper and salt. If further seasoning be wanted take a Kirschenwasser hint from the faggot of Duxelles. Cover and pinch it up, tie it in a cloth, and steam it or boil it for an hour and a half.
An alphabetical entry that slides from kid (young goat) into three distinct kidney preparations: broiled, tossed, and a suet-less kidney pudding. The kid paragraph is commentary rather than method; the working recipes are the kidneys.
- Core them, not just skin themThe book says skin and split, but the step that decides the dish is cutting out the white fatty core and the gristly tubes at the hinge. Left in, they stay chewy and leak a faintly ammoniac flavour into everything around them.
- Cut side to the fire firstThis is the one instruction the author bothers to underline, and it is right. Searing the cut face sets the surface so the kidney curls into a shallow cup; turned over, it collects its own juices, which is where the maitre d'hotel butter goes. Under a hot grill or on a very hot ridged pan, two to three minutes a side is plenty for lamb kidneys.
- Underdone means pink, not rawThe recipe says the kidneys "should be underdone", and the texture goes hard and granular the moment they are cooked through. Aim for a faint blush at the centre and rest them a minute off the heat.
- "Tossed" is a sauteTwo or three ounces of butter is 55-85 g, generous for a pan of kidneys but it becomes the sauce base once the flour goes in. The five-minute toss is a sear only; the ten minutes afterwards is the sauce reducing with the sherry and gravy.
- A glass of sherryNineteenth-century cookery books use "a glass" loosely; a wineglassful is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though larger readings occur. Start at 2 fl oz (60 ml) and add more once the flour has cooked out, rather than guessing high.
- Shalot and Duxelles"Shalot" is shallot. The "faggot of Duxelles" points to the book's own Duxelles entry, a seasoning bundle of mushroom trimmings, shallot and herbs; a spoonful of finely chopped mushroom cooked down with shallot and thyme gives a similar effect. What the "Kirschenwasser hint" means here is unclear.
- Puff paste is the wrong crustPuff paste may not hold -- "puff paste No. 4" refers to one of the book's own numbered pastes, and a laminated puff softens badly under an hour and a half of steam. A steamed kidney pudding is more usually lined with a suet crust; following the original literally, expect a soft, saturated lining rather than a wall that holds.
- An hour and a half is shortAn hour and a half is on the short side -- raw beefsteak and kidney sealed in a basin need long, slow steaming to become tender, and filled puddings are commonly given three to four hours. At ninety minutes the pastry will be set but the steak may still be firm, unless the meat is cut very small.
- YieldTwo lamb kidneys per person for the broiled or tossed versions. A pudding built in a 1.5-litre (2.5-pint) basin with about 700 g steak and four kidneys serves four to six.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was compiled by the journalist E. S. Dallas under the name of Auguste Kettner, the Soho restaurateur, and its alphabetical arrangement is why kid and kidney share a page with no real connection between them. The opening remarks reflect a genuine British discomfort with goat: kid was eaten in Britain into the eighteenth century and remained common around the Mediterranean, but by the Victorian period it had largely dropped out of the London market, and the book passes on stories of kid being sold for house lamb. Kidneys, by contrast, were everywhere. Devilled or broiled kidneys were a fixture of the English breakfast sideboard and the club grill room, and steak and kidney pudding, then still a relatively young dish under that name, was becoming one of the defining items of the British table. The instruction to present the cut face to the fire first is the kind of workshop detail that marks the book out from the domestic manuals of the same decade.