Cut eight skinned kidneys lengthwise; fry them in butter over a hot fire, season and add some finely chopped blanched shallots fried in butter, some minced mushrooms, chopped parsley and lemon juice. Just when prepared to serve, stir in a piece of fresh butter, dress the kidneys and pour the sauce over, garnishing around with small one inch in diameter potato croquettes (No. 2782) and then serve.
A quick sauté with a butter-mounted pan sauce; the whole thing takes less than ten minutes once the garnish is ready. Everything depends on not overcooking the kidneys.
The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years in the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and its dozens of garnish-and-sauce variations on a single cut are a working chef's index rather than home cooking. Dishes labelled à la Lully are generally traced to Jean-Baptiste Lully, the Florentine-born composer at the court of Louis XIV — one of the many nineteenth-century French kitchen names borrowed from musicians, painters and courtiers to distinguish otherwise similar preparations on a long menu, rather than an indication of any seventeenth-century original. Lamb and mutton kidneys were everyday restaurant fare then, cheap and quick to cook to order; the shallot-mushroom-parsley-lemon-butter treatment here is a simple pan sauce that a station cook could throw together between orders.