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Stewed Veal Kidneys
Beef kidney may also be used. Cut out the hard, white substance and fat inside the kidneys, wash them well and soak them three or four hours in cold water, changing the water as soon as it becomes cloudy. Then set the kidneys upon the fire in a granite pan, add enough cold water to cover them and heat slowly. When just at the boiling point pour off the hot water and again just cover them with cold water, once more heating slowly and again changing the water when hot. Change the water in this way three times and after the third changing cook slowly for twenty minutes if the small kidneys are used-forty minutes if using a beef kidney-then set away to cool. If the stew is to be used for a breakfast dish, this preliminary cooking must be done the day before. When ready to prepare, separate all the cords and veins from the kidneys, leaving only the lean part. Cut this into small pieces and for every three cups of meat allow the following: two cups of water; two bay leaves; two teaspoons of butter; two tablespoons of flour; four slices of lemon; salt and pepper to taste. Place the chopped kidneys in a granite pan, add the bay leaves, the water and the slices of lemon and stew gently for twenty minutes. When ready to serve remove the bay leaves, add the flour, rubbed smooth in the butter, season with salt and pepper, and when thickened to the consistency of cream serve on a hot dish.
A long-winded but sound method: the repeated cold-water changes are the whole point of the recipe, since they strip the ammoniac tang out of kidney before it ever meets seasoning.
- The hinge: blanch, don't boilEach of the three water changes is brought up slowly and poured off the moment it reaches the boil, exactly as the recipe directs. The usual reasoning given is that a hard boil sets the strong flavour into the meat rather than drawing it out; that is kitchen lore rather than demonstrated fact, but either way a rolling boil works against the three or four hours of soaking that preceded it.
- "Granite pan"Granite ware is speckled enamelled steel. Period books commonly specified it for acid cooking, so the lemon may well be the reason, though the recipe also asks for it at the preliminary stage when nothing acid is present. Any enamelled, stainless or nonstick pan does the job; bare cast iron or unlined copper will give a metallic taste.
- Kidney quantitiesThree cups of trimmed kidney is on the order of a pound or so of cleaned meat, and you will need appreciably more than that in raw weight to get it. Trimming losses are substantial once the cords, veins and core are gone, and yields vary too much for a firm figure.
- Veal versus beefVeal kidney is mild and comparatively tender; beef kidney is coarser and stronger, and the recipe accordingly gives it forty minutes in the preliminary cooking rather than twenty. Lamb kidneys, easier to buy now, are small and mild and will need less of both the soaking and the blanching.
- The final stewTwenty minutes of gentle simmering after the meat is already cooked through is for the sauce, not the kidney. Keep it at a bare tremble; a hard simmer tightens kidney into rubber quickly.
- ThickeningTwo teaspoons of butter to two tablespoons of flour is not much fat for a workable paste. Use roughly equal volumes, about two tablespoons of each, worked into a smooth beurre manie and whisked in a little at a time.
- Lemon slicesFour slices left in for the whole stew will pick up bitterness from the pith. Peel and pith removed, or a squeeze of juice at the end, gives the same cut against the richness.
- Yield and servingThree cups of meat serves four generously. Serve on toast, over rice, or with boiled potatoes; the sauce is thin by design, meant to be soaked up.
Kidney stew belonged squarely to the breakfast table in Anglo-American households of the late nineteenth century, which is why the recipe pauses to tell the cook to do the tedious part the day before. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book in that same spirit of practical instruction for the woman running a house without much help, and offal recipes were a necessary part of any such book: kidney, liver, heart and tripe were cheap and sold by every butcher. The elaborate soaking and triple-blanching reflects a period taste that wanted the economy of the organ without its assertive smell. The lemon and bay pairing is a familiar nineteenth-century answer to any rich meat.