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Kidney Souffle
Mince finely a veal kidney and add one-half pound of minced veal. Make a brown sauce of flour and butter, and add the meat to it. Let it cool a little, and add three well-beaten eggs, with a teaspoonful of rasped Gruyere. Butter a mold, and sprinkle the inside with breadcrumbs, and fill it with the mince. Leave it for three quarters of an hour in the oven, or for an hour and a half in the double saucepan of boiling water. Turn it out of the mold and serve with either a tomato or a mushroom sauce.
This is a baked forcemeat pudding rather than a soufflé in the modern sense — the eggs go in whole and unwhipped, so expect a firm, sliceable timbale. The original assumes you know the proportions of a brown sauce and the temper of a coal oven, so both need filling in.
- Prepare the kidney firstVeal kidney comes encased in fat with a gristly core. Trim away the suet and cut out the core, then soak the kidney in cold salted water or milk for 30 minutes and pat dry; soaking takes off any lingering ammoniac tang.
- The brown sauce, in numbersFor half a pound of veal plus one kidney, work 3 tablespoons butter with 3 tablespoons flour and cook the roux to a nut brown, then whisk in about a cup of veal or beef stock to make a thick, spoon-coating base. It should be closer to a panade than a pouring sauce — a thin sauce will not hold the mince in suspension.
- Cool before the eggs go in"Let it cool a little" means let the base drop to hand-warm before the eggs go near it. Add three beaten eggs to a hot roux base and they scramble into threads, and the finished mince turns grainy instead of smooth.
- Oven temperatureBake at 325-350F, and set the buttered mold in a pan of hot water even for the oven method — direct dry heat at the sides will make the egg mixture curdle and weep before the middle sets.
- DonenessThree-quarters of an hour suits a mold of roughly a quart; the water-bath-on-the-stove version takes the full hour and a half. Either way it is done when the centre reads 160F and a knife comes out clean, since both veal and kidney are being served fully cooked here.
- Season itThe original lists no salt or pepper at all. Salt, black pepper and a scrape of nutmeg are appropriate; a teaspoonful of grated Gruyere is a very light hand by current taste, and 2-3 tablespoons gives the cheese any presence.
- Rasped means grated"Rasped Gruyere" is cheese taken off on a rasp or fine grater — the same thing as finely grated, no special ingredient involved.
- Turning out and yieldLet the mold stand 10 minutes off the heat before unmolding, or the outer layer tears. A quart mold serves about four as a lunch or supper dish with the tomato or mushroom sauce.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in 1915, when Belgian refugees were arriving in Britain in large numbers after the German invasion, and its recipes were gathered from those households and sold on their behalf. That origin shows plainly in a dish like this one: a single veal kidney and half a pound of veal, bound with roux and eggs and stretched into a moulded pudding, with a teaspoonful of cheese for flavour rather than a handful. Baking such mixtures in a buttered, crumbed mold set in a water bath was common practice for veal, brains, kidney and fish alike, and the accompanying tomato or mushroom sauce was a conventional finish.