No. 1619
Mutton Kidneys on Skewers, Bordelaise Sauce
Brochettes de Rognons de Mouton a la Sauce Bordelaise
Ranhofer assumes a cook who already knows how to dress a kidney and who has a bordelaise standing by. The whole dish turns on heat and timing: kidney meat is tender for about two minutes and tough forever after.
- Do not overcookKidney seizes and turns rubbery the moment it passes medium. Six to eight minutes total over a very hot fire, turned once or twice, leaving the centers rosy, is about the outer limit for pieces of this size.
- Mutton kidneysMutton means an adult sheep, and its kidneys are larger and stronger-flavored than the lamb kidneys most butchers now stock. Lamb kidneys are the practical stand-in; allow two per person, which gives twelve pieces.
- Cleaning firstThe recipe passes over it: peel off the outer membrane and cut out the white core of fat and vessels with the point of a knife before cutting the kidney across into six.
- "A brisk fire"Live coals burning hot and clear, no flame. A charcoal grill raked hot, or a broiler element fully preheated with the rack set two to three inches beneath it.
- The baconPeriod bacon was generally drier and saltier than modern supermarket rashers. Buy it sliced thick, an eighth of an inch as specified, and cut inch squares; thin, wet bacon shreds off the skewer and steams rather than crisps.
- Oil and crumbsThe recipe says only 'oil,' most likely olive oil, and it does two jobs: it keeps the lean kidney from drying and glues the crumbs on. Use dry fine crumbs, not fresh, or they will scorch before the meat is done.
- SkewersMetal skewers, which such a kitchen would most likely have used. Wooden ones need a half-hour soak and will still char over a fire this hot.
- Sauce No. 436The classical bordelaise of this period is a red-wine and shallot reduction finished with espagnole or half-glaze and garnished with poached beef marrow. Any good modern bordelaise serves; send it to the table in a boat, not over the skewers, so the crumbs stay crisp.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity; scaled to two kidneys it makes a single portion or a small entree for two.
Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in order: three consecutive numbers here are given over to mutton kidneys alone, plain, deviled, and dressed with bordelaise. Skewered offal grilled over coals is far older than the book — the brochette is simply the French skewer, and the technique of alternating lean meat with fat pork or bacon so the fat bastes the lean is a standard of the classical kitchen. Bordelaise sauce takes its name from Bordeaux and its character from red wine, shallots and marrow; the pairing with kidney is a natural one, since a strongly flavored variety meat can carry a sauce that would overwhelm a plainer cut. The dish also reflects a period when organ meats were ordinary restaurant fare rather than a specialty, and when mutton, rather than lamb, is generally thought to have been the more common sheep meat on American tables.