No. 1704

Stewed Lamb Kidneys with Madeira and with Mushrooms

Rognons d'Agneau Sautes au Madere et aux Champignons

To obtain fine stewed kidneys it must be perfectly well understood that they should be sauted over a quick fire in order to seize them rapidly and ought never to be allowed to boil or cook in their sauce. Suppress the skin from eight fresh lambs' kidneys; mince them up, removing all the hard parts. Heat some butter in a pan and when hot, put in the kidneys and fry them over a brisk fire; season with salt and pepper, and when the meats are sized without being dry, take them out with a skimmer, leaving the liquid in the pan. Fry a tablespoonful of chopped onions in butter in a sautoir, pour into it the reduced kidney gravy, and let the whole cook with a little half-glaze sauce (No. 413), and half a gill of Madeira wine, strain and skim the fat from the sauce, and pour it over the kidneys, heat them without boiling, and finish the stew with lemon juice and chopped parsley.

With Mushrooms.—Instead of using Madeira, reduce the sauce with mushroom essence (No. 392), and add some sliced mushrooms.

← No. 1703 Lamb Kidneys on Skewers Lamb No. 1705 Leg of Lamb a la Bercy →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer states the essential point in his first sentence: the kidneys are seared separately and reheated in a finished sauce, never simmered in it. Everything else is arithmetic and translation.

Never boil the kidneysKidney protein tightens and turns granular as it approaches a simmer, and prolonged cooking in the sauce can give it a strong, faintly ammoniac taste. Sear them, pull them out, build the sauce, then return them only long enough to warm through, off direct heat.
"Mince them up"In 1894 this means cut into small pieces, not grind. Halve each kidney lengthwise, cut out the white core and any fat or membrane, and slice each half into two or three pieces.
Half a gill of MadeiraA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup or 4 tablespoons. Use a dry or medium-dry Madeira (Sercial or Verdelho); modern sweet cooking Madeira will throw the sauce out of balance.
Half-glaze sauceHis No. 413 is demi-glace: espagnole reduced with brown stock. A small quantity of well-reduced veal or beef stock, thickened just enough to coat, stands in for it; the recipe asks only for 'a little'.
Mushroom essenceNo. 392 is a reduction of mushroom trimmings and stems in stock, cooked down to a concentrated liquid. In place of it, reduce the liquid from sautéing the sliced mushrooms, or steep dried mushrooms and reduce the strained soaking water.
SautoirA shallow straight-sided pan, not a deep pot. The wide surface matters here because the sauce has to reduce quickly while the seared kidneys wait.
Heat and crowding"A quick fire" means the pan is properly hot and the butter foaming before the kidneys go in, and they go in in one layer with space between them. Two batches are better than one crowded batch, which steams and gives up its juices.
Yield and servingEight lamb kidneys serve about four as a course, two or three as a main. It suits toast, a vol-au-vent case, or plain rice or potatoes; the lemon juice and parsley go in at the very end, off the heat.

A Little History

This is from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is French restaurant cooking transplanted whole. Rognons sautés au madère was a fixture of the nineteenth-century repertoire, the kind of quickly made variety-meat dish that suited breakfast, luncheon and supper service because it took minutes once the stock and demi-glace were already standing on the stove — and in a kitchen like Ranhofer's they always were. The numbered cross-references to a half-glaze and a mushroom essence are the tell: the recipe assumes a brigade with a day's worth of foundation sauces in hand, and what looks like a short dish is really the last five minutes of a much longer chain of work. Lamb and veal kidneys were common market goods then, and Ranhofer's insistence that they must never boil is the usual professional advice on cooking them.