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Curried Mutton Kidneys
Pour one wineglassful of rich gravy or brown sauce into a saucepan with one tablespoonful of butter well-kneaded with curry powder, and boil until it is fairly thick. Meanwhile cut two or three onions in rings, fry them over a moderate fire to color slightly, sprinkle over a little salt, and drain them. Put in a dozen mutton kidneys, skinned and minced very finely in a fryingpan with a little butter, and fry them until done. Place them on a strainer to remove all the fat, arrange them on a dish, pour the sauce over them and decorate with the rings of fried onions and potato croquettes.
A hotel breakfast-and-supper dish built on two things a modern cook has to get right: sourcing the kidneys and not overcooking them. Everything else is assembly.
- Kidneys cook in minutesChopped lamb kidney is done as soon as the pink has just gone from the cut surfaces — two to three minutes over fairly high heat. Held longer they turn grainy and rubbery and give off a strong ammoniac smell. Fry in batches so the pan stays hot rather than stewing them in their own juice.
- Mutton kidneysMutton means an adult sheep, rarely sold in the United States now. Lamb kidneys are the direct substitute and milder; a dozen is roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb, serving four to six. Veal kidney works as well but is larger and costlier.
- Preparation the recipe assumesSkinning means peeling off the thin membrane. You also need to cut out the pale core of fat and gristle at the hollow of each kidney, which Oscar takes for granted. Some cooks soak the trimmed kidneys in cold salted water or milk for 20 minutes to mellow the flavor.
- "Minced very finely"Hand-chopped to a small dice, not ground. Grinding kidney gives a pasty texture that will not brown.
- A wineglassfulAbout 2 fl oz, a quarter cup. That is a very small amount of sauce for a dozen kidneys — half to three quarters of a cup of good brown sauce or demi-glace is closer to what the plate needs.
- Butter kneaded with curry powderButter kneaded with curry powder is the same kneading action as beurre manié, though that term properly means butter worked with flour as a thickener: soften a tablespoon of butter and work the curry powder into it, then whisk it into the simmering gravy so the spice goes in dispersed in fat rather than dry and dusty. Start with a teaspoon or two of curry powder and taste.
- The onion rings"Fry to color slightly" means a gentle golden, not the deep brown crisp of modern fried onions — a moderate fire and a few minutes in butter or oil. Salt and drain them after frying so they do not weep onto the sauce.
- ServingKidneys shed a lot of fat and liquid; the draining step is not optional or the sauce will break on the platter. Potato croquettes are the period garnish, but plain fried or mashed potato, or toast, carries the sauce just as well.
Curried kidneys belong to the Anglo-Indian breakfast and supper repertoire that British cooks brought home in the nineteenth century, where commercial curry powder — rather than a preparation used in India — was applied to whatever needed reviving: cold meat, eggs, prawns, and above all offal. Kidneys were cheap, cooked in minutes, and had a strong enough flavor to stand up to spice, which is why devilled and curried kidneys turn up on hotel and club chafing-dish menus on both sides of the Atlantic. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, compiled his 1896 book from the hotel's working kitchen, and the presence of mutton kidneys here is a reminder that a grand New York hotel of the period served an essentially French-trained kitchen's version of English tastes, down to the brown sauce, the fried onion rings, and the ring of potato croquettes around the dish.