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Kidneys En Brochette
Split the kidneys, put over the fire in cold water and bring to the boiling point rapidly. Drain, wipe and slice each half. Arrange these slices on small skewers alternating each with a slice of fat bacon the same size. Broil quickly and serve on toast, keeping the skewer in.
A three-minute dish once the kidneys are trimmed. Everything depends on pulling them off the heat while they are still faintly pink inside.
- Which kidneysMost likely lamb kidneys — small, mild, roughly 2 oz each — though the recipe does not say. Veal kidney works if sliced thin; beef kidney is generally held to be too strong and too coarse for broiling and is usually stewed.
- Trimming, which the recipe skipsAfter splitting, snip out the white core and fat at the hinge and peel off the thin outer membrane, which shrinks and curls under heat. Some cooks soak the halves 20-30 minutes in lightly salted water or milk to draw off the ammoniac edge.
- The blanchBringing them up rapidly from cold water sets the surface and mellows the flavour. Take them out the moment the water reaches a boil — a full simmer here toughens the meat before it ever meets the broiler.
- "Fat bacon"Streaky bacon cut thin, not the lean center-cut sold now. Its job is to baste the kidney, so it needs visible fat; a fatty slab bacon is closer in character than a lean modern rasher.
- Broil quicklyUnder a broiler at its highest setting, or over hot coals, for a very short time; the slices are thin and have already been blanched. Kidneys go grainy and liverish once overcooked.
- SkewersThe recipe says only "small skewers"; metal is the practical choice, since wooden ones char under a broiler unless soaked, and the recipe wants the skewer left in on the plate.
- Serving and yieldThe recipe gives no quantities. Serve on toast, which catches the juices.
En brochette is simply French for "on a skewer," and the phrase entered English-language cookbooks in the nineteenth century as a genteel label for small pieces of meat grilled on a skewer — the same construction behind brochette of oysters, sweetbreads and chicken livers that fill out the grill chapters of the period. Kidneys were breakfast and supper food in Anglo-American households well into the twentieth century, cheap, quick to cook, and sold by butchers who broke down whole carcasses as a matter of course. Butterick was a pattern company, and its cook book was aimed at a middle-class housekeeper expected to get a hot savoury on the table without a professional kitchen behind her. Organ meats fell out of favour in American home cooking after the mid-century, which is why a recipe that once needed no explanation now needs a paragraph on trimming.