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Kidney Bacon Rolls
Peel and chop a small onion fine, and mix it with one teacupful of grated bread crumb, one tablespoonful of chopped parsley, the grated rind of half a lemon, and a small quantity of pepper and grated nutmeg. Moisten the mixture slightly with beaten egg, spread it over some thin slices of bacon, and place a small kidney on each. Roll the bacon round the kidney and tranfix it with skewers. Put the rolls in a baking dish and bake them in a hot oven for twenty minutes. When done put the rolls on a hot dish, garnish with fried parsley, and serve. Or they may be left until cold, and then served on a dish over which has been spread a folded napkin, or an ornamental dish-paper. Broiled Mutton Kidneys, Maitre d'Hotel Place some kidneys in boiling water to soak for a few minutes, remove them, dry, skin, and cut them down the center. Fasten them open with skewers, sprinkle over salt and pepper, dip into warmed butter, place them on a gridiron with the opened side downwards, and broil thoroughly. Dress them on a dish with a mixture of minced parsley, lemon-juice, salt and pepper and maitre d'hotel butter in the center and serve very hot.
Two kidney dishes run together in the original: a baked bacon roll and a broiled kidney with maître d'hôtel butter. Both hinge on the same thing, which is not overcooking the kidney.
- The hinge: cooking timeLamb or mutton kidney goes from tender to rubbery in a minute or two. Twenty minutes in a hot oven is enough only if the kidneys are whole and the bacon needs the time; check at 12-14 minutes and pull them while the centre is still faintly rosy.
- "A hot oven"Roughly 400-450F by the usual period reckoning. The heat is there to crisp the bacon and set the crumb coating quickly rather than to cook the kidney through slowly.
- Which kidneys"Small kidney" means a whole lamb or mutton kidney, the size of a large plum. Veal kidney is far bigger and would need halving; beef kidney is too coarse and strong for this treatment. Order from a butcher, as few supermarkets stock them.
- Preparing themSnip off the membrane and cut out the white core and any fat at the hinge before rolling. The brief soak in boiling water in the second recipe most likely firms the surface so the skin peels away cleanly, though the recipe does not say why.
- A teacupfulPeriod teacups varied a good deal; anywhere from about half a cup to a full cup of soft fresh crumbs will work. These are fresh grated crumbs from a stale loaf, not dry packaged crumbs, which will not hold together with a little beaten egg.
- BaconThin-cut streaky bacon, unsmoked if you want the kidney to read clearly. Modern bacon is wetter and shrinks more, so overlap the slices slightly and skewer firmly or the roll will spring open in the oven.
- SkewersWooden cocktail picks soaked in water for ten minutes, or short metal skewers. Count them out before serving so none go to the table unnoticed.
- Gridiron and "broil thoroughly"A gridiron sat over coals; use an overhead broiler or a hot grill pan, cut side down first as directed. Three to four minutes a side is thorough for a split lamb kidney.
- Maitre d'hotel butterButter creamed with minced parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, chilled into a log and sliced. The recipe names it once, in the centre of the dish, and the surrounding parsley-and-lemon mixture uses the same flavourings; one batch will cover both.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs completely, then drop them into hot fat for a few seconds until they stop sputtering. Wet parsley will spit violently.
- YieldTwo rolls per person as a savoury or breakfast dish, three as a light main course.
Kidneys were everyday eating in the English-influenced hotel kitchens of the 1890s, turning up at breakfast, at supper, and as the "savoury" course that closed a formal dinner. Oscar Tschirky, the maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf whose name carries this 1896 book, was compiling the working repertoire of a grand New York hotel, and that repertoire was still largely French technique applied to British habits: bacon-wrapped kidneys, devilled kidneys, kidneys on toast. The maitre d'hotel butter of the second recipe is the plainest of the classic compound butters, parsley and lemon worked into softened butter, and its name is traditionally explained as marking it the sort of thing the head of the dining room would have sent out on a grilled chop or fish. The cold service described here, on a folded napkin or an ornamental dish-paper, belongs to the buffet and supper-room side of hotel work, where food had to look composed after it had stopped steaming.