No. 1700

Brochettes of Lamb Kidneys

Brochettes de Rognons d'Agneau

Peel off the thin skin covering the kidneys, cut them across into three-sixteenth of an inch slices, season with salt and pepper, and baste with sweet oil. Thread these on skewers alternating each piece with a bit of bacon one inch square and an eighth of an inch thick; dip the whole into oil and roll in fresh bread-crumbs, broil them over a slow fire, dress and sprinkle with maitre d'hotel butter (No. 581).

← No. 1699 Lamb Kidneys a la Lully Lamb No. 1701 Lamb Kidneys, Flemish Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

A straightforward skewer of kidney and bacon, but the margin between right and ruined is about ninety seconds. Cook the kidney until just pink at the centre and no further.

The hinge: donenessLamb kidney slices this thin need roughly 2 to 3 minutes per side over moderate heat, and should stay faintly rosy inside. Taken past that they turn grainy and develop the ammoniac tang most people blame on kidney itself.
"Slow fire"Ranhofer means a bed of charcoal past its flaming stage, or moderate heat — not a searing broiler. The crumb coating scorches long before the kidney is done if the heat is high; under a domestic broiler, set the pan on a lower rack rather than directly beneath the element.
Sweet oilPlain olive oil, mild rather than peppery. In the 1890s "sweet" distinguished fresh oil from oil that had gone rancid, not a flavour profile.
Preparing the kidneysBeyond peeling the membrane, trim out the pale core of fat and gristle at the hollow of each kidney; it will not soften. Slices of three-sixteenths of an inch are a scant 5 mm — thin enough that a sharp knife matters more than a ruler.
The baconNineteenth-century bacon was drier and saltier than most modern supermarket rashers, which are brine-pumped and will steam rather than crisp. Cut squares from a thick slab, and give them a minute in a dry pan first so they are rendered by the time the kidney is ready.
BrochettesSkewers, nothing more. Metal is preferable here since the crumbed exterior wants direct contact with heat; if using bamboo, soak it well and expect the ends to char.
Maître d'hôtel butterRanhofer's No. 581 is a compound butter of the standard type, butter creamed with chopped parsley, lemon juice and seasoning. Chill it, slice coins from the log, and lay them on the hot brochettes at the table so the butter melts into a sauce.
YieldThe original gives none. Two lamb kidneys per person is a generous first course; six kidneys will fill four skewers and serve three.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits among a run of lamb-kidney preparations — à la Lully, Flemish style, and others — that shows how routinely offal appeared on an ambitious American menu of the period. The skewer-and-bacon treatment is French grill-cook practice rather than anything invented at Delmonico's: kidneys and bacon are lean and fat set against each other, and the crumb coating is there to hold the seasoning and the oil in place over open coals. Maître d'hôtel butter, the parsley-and-lemon compound finish, was the standard dressing for anything grilled in this tradition, and Ranhofer refers back to a single numbered recipe for it repeatedly across the book — a sign of how systematically he expected his volume to be used, more reference manual than cookbook to read through.