Kidney Toast
INGREDIENTS for breakfast dish for 2 persons.-2 sheep's kidneys, or 1/4 lb. of bullock's kidney, 1 oz. of butter, a squeeze of lemon, cayenne, salt, 2 slices of buttered toast. AVERAGE COST, 8d.
Stew the kidneys in a very little water till quite tender; then skin them, remove the gristle and pound smooth in a mortar with the lemon-juice, butter and seasoning.
Spread the mixture on the toast, which should be buttered on both sides and put in the oven to get hot through.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian breakfast savoury: poached kidney pounded to a paste and spread on hot buttered toast. It is essentially a potted meat, and the texture of the paste is what decides whether it is good.
- The hinge: don't overcook the kidneyLamb's kidneys need only about 8-12 minutes at a bare simmer in a very little water to be tender; push them further and they turn grainy and the paste goes dry. Ox (bullock's) kidney is much tougher and will want considerably longer.
- Sheep's kidneysSold today as lamb's kidneys. Two are what the recipe allows for two people. Strip the thin membrane and cut out the white core and gristle before pounding, not just after.
- Soak firstModern kidneys benefit from 20 minutes in cold salted water or milk before cooking, drained and patted dry, which tempers the ammoniacal edge.
- Mortar or machineA small food processor does in 30 seconds what the mortar does in five minutes, but pulse rather than run it: over-processing turns the mixture pasty and gluey. For a smoother result, push the pounded meat through a sieve.
- Butter quantity1 oz is 2 tablespoons for the recipe's quarter-pound of kidney, which gives a stiff spread. Soften it rather than melting it, and add a spoonful of the cooking liquid if the paste will not come together.
- Oven heatThe toast only needs heating through, not cooking. 350F/180C for 4-5 minutes is ample; longer and the butter runs out of the toast and the paste dries at the edges.
- SeasoningCayenne here is doing the work of a whole spice cupboard. A good pinch, plus salt and the lemon, and taste before spreading -- kidney takes more salt than you expect. A dash of Worcestershire or anchovy is in keeping with the period.
- Cost8d for two portions, or 4d a head.
Kidney toast belongs to the family of English breakfast and supper savouries -- potted meats, devilled bones, anchovy toast -- that filled the sideboard of a middle-class Victorian household and used up cuts that cost pennies. Offal was cheap, plentiful and did not keep, so it went to breakfast; the pounding in a mortar with butter is the same technique used for potted beef and potted shrimps, though those were preserved under a sealing layer of clarified butter, which this dish has not got. Beeton's costings, given here as 8d, were a selling point of the original Book of Household Management and its many later derivatives: the book was written for mistresses of modest establishments who needed to know what a dish would cost before ordering it. The dish is a close cousin of devilled kidneys, which keeps the kidney whole and sauced; this version simply takes the same ingredients further, into a spread.