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Stewed Lamb Kidneys with Mushrooms
Skin and finely slice twelve very fresh lamb kidneys. Heat a table spoon butter in a frying pan, add the kidneys, season with half teaspoon salt and briskly fry for five minutes, tossing meanwhile. Drain off the butter, add two tablespoons sherry, six finely minced canned mushrooms, a half gill demi-glace a half gill tomato sauce a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and saltspoon cayenne pepper. Mix well and briskly cook on the open fire for five minutes, tossing them frequently, pour into a deep dish and serve.
A quick sauté that lives or dies on heat and timing: ten minutes of cooking in total, and the second five are really just reducing the sauce.
- Don't overcook themLamb kidneys firm up and turn rubbery and livery within a minute or two of being done. Five minutes of brisk frying for thin slices is already generous; aim for browned outside, faintly pink within, and treat the second five-minute stage as sauce reduction rather than further cooking.
- Skinning and coring"Skin" means peeling off the thin outer membrane, which will otherwise contract and toughen. Also cut out the pale fatty core at the centre — the recipe assumes you know to do it. A brief soak in cold water or milk mutes the ammoniac edge some people dislike.
- A gillHalf a gill is 1/4 cup, so you want 1/4 cup demi-glace and 1/4 cup tomato sauce. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, and for cayenne that is a lot; an eighth is closer to modern taste.
- Demi-glaceIn a professional kitchen of this period demi-glace was a standing preparation: espagnole sauce and brown stock reduced together to a thick, glossy sauce. Commercial demi-glace concentrate or a well-reduced beef stock works; if you substitute plain stock, reduce the pan liquid harder or the dish will be thin.
- Tomato sauceNot pasta sauce. The book means the classical cooked tomato sauce of the period — tomato, stock, aromatics, sieved smooth. Passata simmered a few minutes with a knob of butter is the nearest quick equivalent.
- Canned mushroomsCanned button mushrooms were commonly used in kitchens of this period and give a soft, briny note. Six minced comes to something like a quarter cup. Fresh mushrooms are better, but sauté them separately first so their water does not slacken the sauce.
- "On the open fire"This most likely means over direct, uncovered heat on the range top rather than an actual hearth fire. High burner, wide pan, and keep the pan moving.
- Draining the butterPouring off the fat before the sherry goes in helps keep the small quantity of sauce from breaking. The kidneys stay in the pan; add the sherry to them and scrape up the browned bits.
- YieldTwelve lamb kidneys serve four to six as a main course with rice or toast, or eight as a savoury or breakfast dish.
Kidneys sit at the heart of Anglo-French breakfast and savoury cookery, and this recipe is written in the language of the professional brigade — demi-glace, tomato sauce, a rapid sauté finished with sherry — rather than that of the home cook. Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906) drew heavily on the author's years at Delmonico's in New York, and the assumption that a cook has both sauces standing ready — a tomato sauce and a demi-glace, itself a derivative of espagnole — is the clearest signal of its restaurant origins. Lamb kidneys were cheap, quick and widely eaten in both Britain and America at the time, appearing devilled, grilled on skewers, or, as here, sliced and stewed briefly in a fortified sauce. The insistence on "very fresh" is not decorative: offal spoils faster than muscle meat, and in a period before reliable domestic refrigeration freshness was often said to be the first quality a cook should check.