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Broiled Veal Kidneys
Órder veal kidneys with the suet left on. Trim, split, and broil ten minutes. Arrange on pieces of toast and pour over melted butter seasoned with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.
Fannie Farmer's instructions assume a butcher who will sell you kidneys in their jacket of suet and a coal broiler that sears fast and hard. Both need translating.
- The hinge: do not overcookVeal kidney turns granular and bitter the moment it goes past pink in the centre. Split halves of a veal kidney want roughly 3 to 5 minutes a side under a hot broiler, not ten minutes total on a domestic appliance that runs cooler than a coal grate. Pull them while the cut face is still rosy and the juices run faintly pink.
- "Broil" means direct radiant heatIn this book broiling is done over or under a fierce fire. Use the oven broiler on high with the rack 3 to 4 inches from the element, preheated for at least 5 minutes, or a very hot ridged grill pan.
- Suet left onVeal kidneys were sold encased in their own hard white fat, which bastes them as they cook. Almost no supermarket sells them this way now; order ahead from a butcher, or ask for a little beef suet or caul fat separately and lay it over the kidneys. Failing that, brush generously with clarified butter.
- TrimmingSplit lengthwise through the cleft, cut out the white core and any tubes with the point of a knife, and peel off the thin outer membrane so the pieces do not curl. Veal kidney is mild and does not need the milk or vinegar soak often prescribed for beef or lamb kidney, though a 20-minute soak in cold salted water does no harm.
- Keeping them flatRun a metal skewer crosswise through each split half. Period cookbooks often direct skewering kidneys for broiling, and it stops them contracting into a fist over high heat.
- The seasoned butterA seasoned melted butter, close to a maitre d'hotel butter but without the parsley and with cayenne in place of pepper: about 4 tablespoons butter melted with a pinch of salt, a scant pinch of cayenne, and a teaspoon or two of lemon juice. Add the lemon off the heat so the butter does not separate, and pour it over at the table.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. One veal kidney serves one to two people as a breakfast or luncheon dish; allow one kidney and one slice of toast per person for a main course.
Kidneys on toast belonged to the substantial Anglo-American breakfast and to the light supper or luncheon that followed a heavy dinner, which is why the dish is so short on ceremony: split, broil, butter, toast. Veal kidney was generally reckoned the choicest of the group, prized over beef and lamb for its mildness and tenderness, and was often sold in its casing of suet, the fat used in the French rognon de veau roasted whole in its own jacket. Farmer's cayenne-and-lemon butter is close to the maitre d'hotel butter she uses elsewhere as a finish for broiled meat and fish. That such a recipe sits unremarked in a cooking-school text says something about turn-of-the-century marketing: offal was cheap, plentiful and expected, and a household cook was assumed to know what to do with more of the animal than a handful of muscle cuts.