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Veal Kidneys à la Canfield
Trim kidneys, cook in Brown Stock ten minutes, drain, and cut in slices. Arrange alternate slices of kidney and thinly sliced bacon on skewers with a fresh mushroom cap at either end of each skewer. Broil until bacon is crisp and arrange on pieces of toast. Pour over sauce made from stock in which kidneys were cooked, seasoned with salt, cayenne, and Madeira wine.
A brief 1900s chafing-dish-era recipe that assumes you already have brown stock on the stove and a butcher who will sell you veal kidneys. The hinge is heat control: kidney turns from tender to grainy and ammoniac within a minute or two of overcooking.
- Trimming means more than it saysSplit each kidney, cut out the white core and the surrounding fat and membrane, then peel off the outer skin. Veal kidney is mild compared with beef, but a 20-30 minute soak in cold water or milk still improves it.
- Ten minutes in stock is the outer limitTen minutes in stock is a gentle poach, not a boil -- for a whole veal kidney of roughly half a pound it appears intended to firm the flesh for slicing rather than cook it through. Hold the stock just below a simmer; at a rolling boil the kidney tightens and weeps.
- Brown StockA capitalised cross-reference to a stock recipe elsewhere in the book. A good unsalted beef stock works; avoid anything heavily reduced or salted, since the sauce concentrates it further.
- BroilingIn this period that would most likely have meant an overhead gas or coal broiler. Use a broiler at high heat about 4 inches from the element, or a very hot grill pan, and turn the skewers so the bacon crisps on all sides -- roughly 6-8 minutes total. The kidney needs only to heat through; it is already part-cooked.
- Bacon and skewersCut the bacon in short lengths and thread it in loose folds between kidney slices so the fat bastes them. Soak wooden skewers first, or use metal ones. Mushroom caps of about 1 1/2 inches sit best on the ends.
- The sauceStrain the poaching stock, reduce it by half to two-thirds, then season with salt, a pinch of cayenne and a tablespoon or two of Madeira off the heat so the wine keeps its aroma. A knob of butter swirled in at the end gives it gloss, though the original does not call for it.
- ToastCut plain white bread about half an inch thick and toast it dry and firm; it has to hold sauce without collapsing. Sourdough or seeded bread will fight the delicacy of the kidney.
- YieldNot stated in the original. Two veal kidneys make about four skewers, enough for four as a first course or two as a main.
Dishes labelled à la Canfield in American cookbooks of this period are usually associated with Richard Canfield, the New York and Saratoga gambling-house proprietor of the 1890s and 1900s, whose rooms were noted for their table as well as their gaming; borrowing the name of a fashionable establishment or personality was common practice, as with Lobster à la Delmonico. The dish itself belongs to the small, rich, quickly grilled savouries of the period -- organ meat, bacon, mushrooms, toast and fortified wine, all cooked in minutes and served hot on a single plate. Veal kidney was an inexpensive and unremarkable cut in 1900, when whole-animal butchery was the norm and offal was cooked without comment; its near-disappearance from American home cooking, rather than any change in the recipe, is what makes this page look exotic now.