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Veal Kidneys Au Vin
Remove fat and sinewy parts from three very fresh veal kidneys, then finely mince them. Heat two tablespoons butter in frying pan, add one finely chopped onion and cook to a nice light brown, then add kidneys, sprinkle over a teaspoon salt and fry on open fire for five minutes, briskly tossing them meanwhile. Lift up with skimmer and keep on a plate, pour a gill broth and a half gill white wine into kidney pan, adding a bay leaf, bean garlic, six finely minced, canned mushrooms, and let reduce for ten minutes. Mix on a saucer a half tablespoon butter with tablespoon flour, add little by little to sauce, cook for three minutes, then add kidneys with half teaspoon chopped parsley, saltspoon cayenne and tablespoon sherry. Lightly mix, cook for two minutes, pour into a deep hot dish and serve.
A French bistro sauté written in the compressed style of the period, with a few units and one piece of vocabulary that no longer read clearly. The hinge is heat and timing: veal kidney turns grainy and smells of ammonia the moment it is cooked past pink.
- Cook them fast, then stopFive minutes of brisk tossing over high heat, then two minutes back in the sauce at the end, is the whole cooking time and it is not padding. Kidney held at a simmer tightens, weeps grey liquid and takes on the sharp ammoniac note people blame on the organ itself.
- "Fry on open fire"Most likely an uncovered pan over direct, full heat rather than anything to do with a fireplace. The pan should be wide enough that the kidneys sear rather than steam.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. So half a cup of broth and a quarter cup of white wine, reduced together for ten minutes.
- "Bean garlic"Read as a bean-sized piece of garlic, roughly one small clove.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. With cayenne, a quarter teaspoon is assertive; a pinch is closer to modern taste.
- The teaspoon of saltA full teaspoon over three kidneys, before any reduction of broth and wine, will read as very salty with today's commercial stock. Salt lightly at the fry stage and correct at the end.
- MincingModern practice is to halve the kidneys, snip out the white core with scissors, and cut into bite-sized pieces rather than mince them; finely minced kidney overcooks almost instantly. Either way, remove every trace of the fatty core.
- Canned mushroomsCanned button mushrooms were a common convenience item when this was written. Fresh cremini, sliced and browned in the butter with the onion, give more flavour and no tinny edge.
- The thickeningButter and flour worked together on a saucer is beurre manié. Add it in small pinches to the simmering sauce, whisking, and give it the full three minutes so the flour loses its raw taste.
- YieldThree veal kidneys serve four as a main course with rice, boiled potatoes or toast to catch the sauce.
Veal kidneys in white wine belong to the standard repertoire of French household and bistro cooking, where offal was cheap, quick and treated with real technique rather than apology. The method here — sear hard, remove the meat, build a sauce in the same pan, return the meat only at the last moment — is the classic handling of any organ meat that toughens with prolonged heat, and it is the same logic behind rognons à la moutarde. American cookbooks of this period imported continental dishes wholesale, keeping French structure and often French idiom half-translated, as in the "bean" of garlic.