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Stewed Beef Kidneys
Stew some beef kidneys in a little salted water until done, then put them on a dish and sprinkle over salt and pepper, add a small quantity of flour to the liquor to thicken it and a little burnt sugar to color it, pour it over the kidneys and serve hot.
A terse recipe even by Oscar's standards, and it omits the one step that decides whether the dish is edible: soaking and trimming the kidneys. Everything else is straightforward.
- Trim and soak firstBeef kidney carries a strong ammoniac smell. Split it, cut away all the white core and fat, then soak the pieces in several changes of cold salted water or milk for an hour or two before stewing. Untrimmed, unsoaked kidney is a large part of the reason the offal has a poor reputation.
- Beef kidney is not lamb kidneyBeef kidney is coarse, multi-lobed and much stronger in flavor than the lamb kidneys usually sold today. It also needs long, gentle cooking rather than quick searing. Butchers will usually order it; it is rarely on display.
- "Until done"Cut into 1-inch pieces and barely simmered, beef kidney needs roughly 1 to 1 1/2 hours to become tender. It tends to tighten and toughen early in the cooking before relaxing again, so do not judge it by an early taste.
- Keep the water low and salted"A little salted water" means just enough to cover. A large volume dilutes the liquor you are about to thicken into the sauce, and skimming the gray scum that rises in the first few minutes improves the finished color.
- Burnt sugarThis is caramel coloring: sugar cooked dark in a dry pan and let down with a little hot water, kept in a bottle for exactly this purpose. Modern equivalents are a few drops of gravy browning or a teaspoon of soy sauce, both of which do the darkening job in a pale kidney gravy.
- ThickeningAdding dry flour to hot liquor will lump. Slake it with cold water into a thin slurry, or cook a small butter-and-flour roux separately and whisk the liquor into it; about 1 tablespoon flour per cup of liquid gives a light gravy.
- Yield and servingOne beef kidney weighs roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb trimmed and serves three or four as a course. Dishes like this were often served at breakfast or supper, with toast, boiled rice, or mashed potato to take the gravy.
Kidney was standard cheap protein in American and British kitchens through the nineteenth century, and its appearance in a Waldorf-Astoria book says something about how those books were assembled: Oscar Tschirky's 1896 volume runs to some 900 pages and includes plain household cookery alongside the hotel's grander service. Organ meats were also a matter of thrift in a hotel that bought whole animals and was expected to sell every part of them. Beef kidney was generally reckoned among the humbler of the offals, and was usually cooked long in water or stewed with steak in a pudding or pie; the "burnt sugar" called for here was a homemade bottled caramel that gave a thin gravy the deep brown color diners associated with meat and expense.