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Fried Kidneys
Cut some kidneys in halves down the center without severing, remove all the skin and fat, and sprinkle with cayenne and salt. Place them in a heated fryingpan, pour on a little clarified butter, fry quickly, and serve upon sippets of toast. Add a little catsup or sauce to the gravy, and pour it over before serving.
Fried Mutton Kidneys with Curry Sauce Trim four kidneys, cut them across in fine pieces, fry them in butter till nicely cooked, season with salt and pepper. Put one ounce of butter into a stewpan with one-half tablespoonful each of curry powder and flour, a little salt, and stir over the fire until mixed; then pour in gradually two-thirds of a breakfast cupful of clear broth, and continue stirring until it boils. A small quantity of finely-chopped onions may be used to flavor the sauce, or the stewpan may be first rubbed over with garlic. When ready, put the kidneys on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them, garnish with sippets of toast, or small croutons of bread that have been lightly fried in butter, and serve.
Two related preparations, both fast pan work. The hinge in each is heat and time: kidney is tender for about a minute either side of done, and tough forever after.
- Do not overcookCut kidney needs 2-3 minutes total over high heat, until the outside is browned and the center still faintly rosy. Held longer it seizes, weeps liquid and turns to rubber. Cook in batches rather than crowding the pan, which drops the temperature and stews them.
- Buying and trimmingThe text specifies only "kidneys" in the first recipe and mutton kidneys in the second; mutton simply meant adult sheep, so lamb kidneys are the practical substitute, and veal kidneys will also serve. Halve lengthwise, peel the thin membrane, and cut out the white core and fat at the hinge, which carries much of the strong ammoniac taste. A 15-minute soak in cold salted water or milk mildens them further.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toast, cut from crustless bread, set around the edge of the dish to soak up the gravy. The croutons named as an alternative are the same thing fried in butter instead of toasted.
- Clarified butterButter with the milk solids and water removed, so it takes frying heat without burning. Melt unsalted butter gently, skim the foam, and pour off the clear fat, leaving the milky residue behind. Ghee works identically.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup ran about 8 to 10 fluid ounces, so two-thirds of one is somewhere between 160 and 200 ml (about 2/3 to 3/4 cup). The sauce should coat, not flood; add broth gradually as directed and stop when it will just cling to a spoon.
- Catsup, 1896 senseCatsup at this date could still mean mushroom or walnut catsup, a thin dark savory condiment, though bottled tomato ketchup was also common in America by the 1890s; the recipe does not say which. If you want the older savoury reading, Worcestershire is the closest thing on most shelves, and a teaspoon into the pan juices is enough.
- Curry powderFry the powder in the butter with the flour for a full minute before liquid goes in, as the instruction to stir over the fire intends. Raw curry powder stirred into broth tastes dusty.
- YieldFour kidneys serve two as a main course, or four at breakfast, which is where this dish belonged.
Kidneys belonged to the English breakfast and the hotel grill, and Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896 while he ran the dining rooms of the original Waldorf on Fifth Avenue, records both traditions for an American readership that had largely inherited them. Devilled and fried kidneys on toast were standard chafing-dish and sideboard fare in the period, cheap enough to be everyday and quick enough to cook to order. The curry sauce is the other half of the story: curry powder had been a British grocery staple since the late eighteenth century, and by the 1890s an American hotel kitchen used it as a ready-made seasoning rather than as an attempt at any particular Indian dish. The pairing of offal with a strong flour-thickened sauce is thoroughly Victorian, and so is the assumption that a reader knows what a sippet is without being told.